Horace
by NightMary
Summary: /Sequel To "Of Loving Giants" Both Are Jugg. Fics/ After years of amnesia, murder, and walking, a ghost is recruited to aid in stopping the reign of madness and death that follows the other Black Zodiac ghosts- all in the name of a love eternal.
1. The Dead Have Highways

**Chapter 1  
**

**Warning: This Story Contains: Questionable Language, Extreme Acts Of Violence, Use/ Mention Of Drugs And Alcohol, Sexual Situations, And Other Things That May Not Be Suitable For A Younger Audience (Rating: M)**

* * *

_The dead have highways _

_-- Clive Barker, "The Book of Blood"'s opening line  
_

He was vaguely aware that the ground his walking feet hovered over was covered in cold, wet snow. The snow was runny and filthy, most of it melted away with the weak, barely bright sun that peeked through the rusted piles of cars in the huge gated-off area near where he stood.

Horace looked up at the stacks of disintegrating cars, feeling a dull sense of relief at seeing familiar surroundings for the first time in the many long years. Since he had left the place where he had been imprisoned for many weeks, he had been searching for a trace back home. Seeing the name of his old town by a strange twist of fate one day three weeks ago had been a work of pure luck- it had been the first time in so long in which he could remember a time before his insanity brought on by death- then the power of those spells- engulfed his mind. He didn't remember much at the time, however, since being made to walk the earth because of the things he had done had also come with the price many other earthbound spirits encountered; losing his memories. It seemed that with each passing moment, he forgot more and more things, particularily when he was thrown into a rage.

It had been impossible to find his way back home because of the fact that as was the price of being on earth without a living body, he was losing touch more and more with his humanity. His thought process, his reasoning, and his temper fuse had begun mouldering since the moment of his death. He knew- somewhere inside of himself- that he was being punished by being slowly turned into a rabid beast.

In his life, he had usually picked his victims based on their treatment of him (Whether they laughed at him or seemed disgusted by him), but now, all it took for him to fly into a black rage was the sound of footsteps, laughter, or even someone glancing through him, as if sensing his malicious presence.

He had assaulted people on crowded streets and had even tossed cars with people inside of them off of roads, causing as many deaths and spreading as much terror as he could when he slipped into that hateful, haunted part of himself. As time passed, he found that he slipped more and more seamlessly into it. Truthfully, when he came out of it, however, he honestly felt twinges of guilt, especially if he had done anything overly sadistic or had harmed children or animals in his black-outs.

Whenever he passed through homes or buildings from time to time and went into an uncontrollable rage, he usually came to only after having done something heinous and unforgivable by polite society. Like wrapping a cheery, pregnant housemother's head in saran wrap, or chasing two children, and barely coming out of his rage before he killed one or the other. This was his burden now- to live his after life as a murderer. Even going as far as to kill for reasons his living self would have killed himself for having committed.

In spurts of "consciousness" (in times when it seemed as though the rage had disappeared, leaving him to sort out where he was and what he had done), he sometimes wondered how many people (innocent people) he had done away with. As well as that, he also wondered how many people he had sent to prison to pay for his crimes, how many children he had left without families, and how many people he had driven insane.

But now… but now he felt the faint stirrings of hope that he would finally be able to become conscious long enough until he felt he could handle the world around him as he was now, inside of the place he stood in front of then.

He stepped forward, his feet never really touching the ground his now otherworldy feet passed through. He reached forward, and felt the icy cold steel of the gate as he allowed his hand to materialize slightly to be able to feel the familiar metal. He wasn't able to be seeable to most living human beings, but he was able to be seen by psychics, people with specially made glasses, and most animals. But, he could become a part of the living world enough so that he could interact with objects, as he was doing right then.

Sure, he could degenerate back into his un-materialized self and pass through it, but he wanted to touch that handle after so long of not being able to. He was ready to hammer the gate down with his fists and legs if it was locked, but he was surprised to find it unlocked and open to anybody who wanted to walk in.

As he swung the gate open, then shut it behind him, he saw many things in his surroundings and from the left-over parts of whatever happened in places he came through. But, the left-overs in this place made him feel rage build up inside of himself. Many people had passed through that gate and had since his capture (and even a little bit before) had made it into a place of sin and ugliness. Even his past in that place barely shadowed the deeds of the many who had dared to enter his sanctum while he was away.

The sight of the garbage strewn about the area where he used to find his only escape in life by working single-mindedly on cars made an all-too familiar but completely turbulent darkness rise up inside of him. His consciousness was given a backseat as hateful, catastrophic anger took over. He was dully aware of his arms tossing cars around in his way as though they weighed no more than blocks of Styrofoam, and of the loud, banshee-like howling his own lips and throat formed. His now almost completely blood red eyes searched for a victim, alive, an object, dead, or otherwise, to inflict his rage on mercilessly. He soon found his victim further into the junkyard.--

A scrawny, emaciated homeless man sat in the kennel, which was somehow tidier than some of the other places in the junkyard. He was sitting in the dirt, his back against the chain link fence, swilling moonshine that he, himself, had made in an abandoned and overlooked part of the junkyard. With every sip of it, he cringed in disgust. Since it was made of dandelions, it tasted just as awful as the weedflower it was made of smelled.

He coughed into his hand loudly, and looked down at his wet palm, knowing what he'd see, but looking nonetheless. Splotches of red and lumps of a tissue-like substance thinly coated his palm where he had coughed into it. He winced, and tucked his red hand into a pocket in his long, filthy overcoat. His organs were all probably deteriorating. Shutting down.

He coughed again, this time just letting the blood that came spurting out with the wracking coughs go wherever the hell it wanted to go. When he opened his eyes after he got done coughing, the gate to the kennel swung all the way open, and slammed shut as hard as a gate like it could. He yelped, and fell backwards against the chain link fence behind him. He suddenly got the feeling that he was _not_ alone, and was, in fact, in the presence of something powerful.


	2. The Numbed Heart

**Chapter 2- The Numbed Heart- Revised**

**Author's Note:** It's 4:30 A.M right now, and guess what? BEDTIIIMMEE! Whoo! Well, since I fell asleep at 5:00 P.M, and woke up at 10, it's not ALL that great a feat, but still... Also, I got off of school today finally, so be expecting more chapters of every story I'm working on- including this one! I'm actually rather proud of this chapter in particular- but I'd appreciate it if you, my audience, would tell me what you think, since I started to work on this at midnight and I just got finished with proofreading.

-- **_M.R.Q_**

* * *

Then, like it never happened, the other presence in the abandoned dog kennel disappeared.

The man looked around at the area surrounding him warily, slowly pulling himself off of the chain link fence.

He sat on the ground, breathing heavily and trying to catch his breath, which panted out of him in rhythm with the drum beats of his pounding heart. He regained some semi-balance of calmness just as he heard the sound of heavy breathing in his ear. He froze, not even having enough time to think as the sound caused a shock wave of fear to travel down his spine.

And then he felt as though huge hands- surely hands belonging only to some monstrously huge primate- grabbed onto his shoulders. And not gently. But, there was nothing there!

Not that it mattered to the man seconds after his discovery, who suddenly felt those hands travel down from his shoulders to grab onto the front of his filthy overcoat and pull him up into the air. He did not stop going up until he found that he was actually at almost equal height to the top of the chain link fence surrounding the kennel.

As soon as the shock wore a little, off, the adrenaline, which was somehow still there despite his many years of depleting it, kicked in, causing him to kick, scream, and flail as hard as he could, just wanting that invisible, evil entity to drop him.

Then, for a split second, he believed that he got his wish when he found himself hanging upside down. For a moment, he thought that whatever it was was just going to let him go after hanging him upside down. But the grip of those hands, which had then transferred to his old sneakers, was not letting go. He cried out, and in kicking as hard as he could, and squirming, he ended up feeling a solid wall of (what felt like) muscle where the thing's body should have been.

He was horrified to realize that the thing was as big as where he had been pulled up to just moments earlier.

He didn't notice the change of pressure that was on his back until it was too late, and he realized that the thing had stuck its knee out before laying him across it on his back. One of the thing's hands had ahold of his head and the other had a grip on his legs, and they were both pressed downward with Herculean strength, snapping the brittle spine that held his body up in two with the knee that he was forced to lay on.

A stream of blood spurted from the man's mouth as the thing hung him upside down once more, giving him enough time to cry out in pain before screaming as loudly as he could. In two heart beats, however, the man looked down at the ground under him as a horrible feeling of certainty came to him.

"Stop! Stop! Don't do this-!" He shouted. The horrible thing crashed him to the ground as fast as a speeding car.

The man's head split open on impact, and a mad craze of bright color and what looked to him like blood-red, cartoonish flowers blossomed in his mind the moment that his brain was freed from the confines of his now splintered skull.

He was aware that, somewhere in the part of himself that was not entranced by the bright flowers and the, whoa, psychedelic colors, that he was going to die. Despite the fact that he had always believed that he deserved to die, and he thought, only moments before this, that he was going to die soon, he found himself frightened of the closing in darkness that inked and stained the satin petals of the red flowers and the bursts of equally color.

The drips of black appeared like rain on the petals, then like paint smudges on the colors, then the droplets morphed and grew on the flowers, greedily stealing their color and vividity. The smudges on the colors soon grew, criss-crossing each other as though a crazed painter was brushing black paint on the canvas he was watching in his head with a huge brush, destroying the colors underneath as if they never were.

And so, despite his fear, the very last thing he was ever aware of was of himself hovering over the enclosed kennel area, and watching as a monstrously huge, muscular, pale man wearing (what looked like) a mechanic's outfit kicked once at the broken body of a man lying crumpled in the middle of the kennel before walking away from the body. In moments, the sight of the man left him as he simply drifted away.--

As Horace walked out of the kennel, his consciousness rose to the surface of the lake that swirled like a pitch black fog in his head.

He frowned, looking down at his hands as he realized what he had done only moments earlier. He found that instead of feeling perhaps vindicated for all of the years that people had been destroying his sanctum, or maybe, more appropriately, guilty for the death of a man who he knew, in his heart, did not harm this place as much as others before him had, he felt numb, his only concern really for what he was going to search for next.

He walked away from the kennel, glancing over at the nearby, small house.

Many things came to him at once; the instinctive memories that came from that house were like those that he had encountered in the entranceway. He could recognize that he knew some of these places from before he died, but specifics failed him, save for the surprisingly clear memory of one night he spent in there as a thirteen-year old, _thumbing through a magazine that specialized in only two things: things that went fast and were made out of metal, and, of course, chicks. It was one of his dad's favorite magazines, and it was one that he actually subscribed to. Sure, Horace would have much rather had a book, but getting one meant going into town, going into a shop which had people, and having to be stared at. And he was more than certain that being caught borrowing a book from the library was going to be something that would not be forgotten by the types of people (mostly teenage boys) who made games out of harassing him whenever he got the courage to actually leave the junkyard._

_From outside of the small, one-room house was the sound of the dogs barking. Horace had been trying his hardest to ignore them, until he heard the sound of his father, yelling from his office/house, which had two rooms slightly bigger than Horace's own room. "Would you shut those fuckin' mutts up?!"_

_Horace sighed.  
_

_He walked outside and walked up to the gate, where the dogs were all running around like nuts, barking. Horace stepped up to the gate, and rattled it loudly until the dogs all quieted down, staring at him. _

_"Shut up, you idiots!" He yelled, or roared, more appropriately._

_Then, something from the corner of his eyes made him turn to the large space that separated the kennel from his home. It took him a moment to realize that he was looking at a small child, because the light that came from the street behind her was dim. _

_A cloud of blond hair that looked a little darker than his own pale hair came down to her small shoulders and her bright green eyes looked up at him. The child looked no older than one or maybe two, and based on how long the hair on the child was, he guessed that the child was a she. _

_She was pressed up against the chain link fence that separated the junkyard from the street outside, her little hands thrust through two spaces in the fencing. One little hand seemed to reach out to him, and this startled Horace more than a little, since children usually stared _at _him, but they usually seemed frightened. This one stared at him, truthful enough, but she seemed more interested in him than _frightened.

"_Heya, mister." she said, lisping and smiling a gap-toothed smile at him. "Wanna play with me?"_

_Horace was at a loss for words. No stranger, especially a child, had ever wanted to spend any time with him at all. But, before he could answer her, a woman wearing jeans, a green sweater, and a long ponytail with red hair came running up to the fence._

"_Molly?! How did you get away from your stroller?!" She grabbed the little girl (Molly?) up and hugged her._

"_I'm sowwy, Auntie Cawwowine." Molly answered. Auntie Cawwowine started rubbing at a speck of dirt that was on Molly's cheek with her thumb, but she stopped when she saw Horace on the other side of the fence. She paled and backed away a step._

"_I-I'm sorry, my niece Molly must have gotten away and walked over here from the park a while ago. I've been looking for her for a long time… uh… I hope she didn't cause any trouble." She tried to smile a nervous smile at Horace, pressing Molly against her chest protectively. Horace ignored her obvious signs of discomfort._

"_No, she wasn't any trouble…" _

_Auntie Cawwowine tried to keep Molly's head pressed against her chest, perhaps in an effort to keep Molly from seeing the scary man, but Molly managed to jerk her head out._

"_Sttttooooopppppppp!" Molly yelled, half annoyed and half angry. She turned to look at Horace, then back up at her aunt. "Let me gooooooo."_

"_But Molly-." Auntie Cawwowine said. Molly struggled in her arms, making annoyed, grunting noises._

"_I wanna say bye-bye to Nice Man!" _

_Auntie Cawwowine eventually had no choice but to put her down, because the girl became close to overpowering the slight woman, which would have sent her crashing to the ground pretty quickly. Molly immediately walked a little toddler pigeon-esque walk over to the chain link fence, thrusting her little hands through the fence once more. _

"_Bye-bye, mister." She said, smiling that gap-toothed grin up at Horace, who stood rooted in place as the girl, unlike her auntie, looked up at him, unfrightened. _

"_Yeah, um… bye." Horace said. It was barely louder than a whisper, but Molly seemed to have heard it, for she somehow managed to smile even wider. She looked over at him for a moment longer before she brought her small hands out of the fence, pursed her little lips, and, unbelievably, blew a kiss at him before tottering off in her aunt's direction._

"_Car there?" She asked, turning to her aunt and pointing at an area on the street outside of the junkyard that Horace could not see well, for it was obscured by the kennel and a large, rusting pick-up truck in the junkyard. Her aunt nodded. Her mouth open agape. Molly started off towards the car, leaving her aunt to stare at her, then to turn to face Horace._

"_I'm sorry, but she's pretty… um… bright for a toddler." She smiled a weak grin at Horace, as if she expected him to be angry at her. He nodded. He was still a little shocked by the toddler's bravery in talking to him, then blowing a kiss at him, as if he wasn't a towering presence- even for a thirteen-year old. "I don't know how she wandered off," Her aunt continued. "But I promise that she won't again on my watch. Sorry for bothering you this late at night." She said. She looked as if she was rooted in spot by fear, and found herself unable to move._

_Horace sighed, and decided to throw the woman a bone by turning away and acting as though he was preoccupied by looking at the dogs. Sure enough, when he turned back, she was gone, along with the strange child._

He didn't understand how or why he would remember that, but there it was, in the few good memories stored there. For some reason, he felt as though the toddler's name should be important to him, but he could not figure out why.

With the exception of a few memories, good memories from his house, Horace realized that he knew there were things in that place that were, well, rotten. And he truthfully didn't think that he could handle whatever was in there.

So far, any happiness he had been hoping to feel in this place had not come to him. He felt bereft. Truthfully, however, he didn't think that he would ever feel happiness in the end. Peace was something that he had, at least, been counting on, but no such feeling had come to him since he had entered the junkyard.

He looked away from the house, looking at the path that lead into the labyrinth that made up the junkyard. If he was to ever feel anything even close to peace, he knew that it laid in the very heart of the place. If there _was _anything good in this rotting place, its heart was it. Its heart was, of course, the clearing. _His_ clearing, where his only prized earthly possession that he really gave a damn about sat.

He walked down a pathway that he remembered by heart, somehow remembering it by pure luck or by a miracle of some kind. When he reached the end of the path that lead into the clearing, he looked at it, trying to place it from the vaguest memories of the place in his own head. The ground was filled with patches of mostly dead grass, but a few spots (the area that mostly surrounded the convertible) was very tall, and seemed to have thrived, despite the harsh weather and being surrounded by disintegrating cars. The convertible itself looked a little worn, but it seemed as though by some amount of luck, it had been spared from what he had seen in a lot of the junkyard that he had seen so far.

Aside from the marks of time, the clearing looked untouched. But, instead of feeling something like happiness or calmness, nothing changed in him from the numbness. His heart sank as deep as it could have possibly gone.

He lowered his head, and closed his eyes. Oh lord, but he was weary, and wanted nothing more than to be let go from his unending torment as a wandering spirit, if for just one moment of calmness and peace. He slowly opened his eyes, and he looked as his right, mostly bare, arm. In death, he was even paler and more frightening than he had been in life. He flexed the muscles in his arm, feeling nothing in response. He was turning more numb the more time he spent in the land of the living, and he understood why. He shouldn't even _be_ in the living world, and at least he should leave the land of the living long enough in a deep rest to recuperate for a year, maybe two in the least. But he couldn't, unless he found what he was, in theory, supposed to find. Being dead came with its own set of rules that were often contradictory, or outright ridiculous.

But, he had hoped that his clearing was what he was supposed to find, yet nothing came for him. No change.

He stared at his arm a moment longer, trying to call for his rage to come forth, just wanting to feel something besides the numbness for just a moment. As if to mock him cruelly, even his rage refused to heed him.

All he could do was stand there, head lowered, numbness settling over him like a shroud wrapping itself around him, cutting off circulation he no longer had, and killing him a second time. But, as impossible as it was, wholly encompassing numbness and a loss of humanity was a kind of ironic death for a ghost. For Horace, it meant that fighting off his madness would very soon account for nothing, and he would just become a lumbering golem, his great form a slave to his rage.


	3. Love Me So

**Chapter 3- Love Me So  
**

Then, a scent blowing on the wind made his head shoot up. He sniffed the air, wanting that scent on the wind to be true and not a cruel remnant of his past. And there it was again.

The way he "sniffed" the air was not smelling in the way that the living understood. Sniffing was one way (a way that Horace was most comfortable with, but a way that he used rarely) to locate lost memories from a nearby place, or to locate anything else that the living could not see or feel.

And from what he scented, a good thing had been here. But when it had been here was a mystery to him.

And, what's more, the closer he came to it, the more he realized that he recognized it. Vaguely, but he realized that it was from a person who's face, voice, and name had all but deserted him. He walked over to the car, stiffly, not wanting to lose that trace, because he instinctively knew that it was by luck that the fickle wind had blown that remnant his way. But, where had it come from, since there had to be something physically here to invoke that strong a "smell"?

He came to the convertible, which was parked on cinder blocks in the center of the clearing. For some reason, Horace felt an innate connection to the old thing, but he couldn't understand why it was that he did. He pulled the car's driver side door open, his senses completely sensitized and his nose completely flared open as she fought to keep a hold of the scent for as long as it would take him to find the source.

He now knew that it came from the car. His eyes scanned the car's interior before he found something on the floor, next to the aged, useless gas pedals. His eyebrows creased as he bent down to pick it up, wondering if the stained, old piece of paper was the source of the memory.

As soon as he felt the paper in his fingers, he froze up. He was sure that if he had been able to breathe air, he would have lost all of it then, as though his lungs were balloons and someone had jabbed them with a needle. In a confusing spiral of voices, ranging from a cheery little girl's all the way to a husky-voiced, sobbing woman's voice was a group collectively reciting a poem that wasn't really a poem, but more of a full-hearted attempt at expressing someone's feelings.

"_My heart, my love," _The child's voice made a softly sighing, then giggling sound, while a few of the others (including the woman's) made a sobbing noise. _"I was just a child, and you nurtured me, I was starving, and you fed me." _The little girl's eerie voice resounded it in a set tone, never faltering, while some of the other's were broken into sobs.

"_I was lonely, and…" _A voice, which sounded like a teenager's, began to cry wildly, crying as though someone had died, or her heart had been broken. _"…And you gave me friendship. But most of all, when I needed it the most, I got you._

"_I love you." _More crying, this time from most of the voices.

"_When I was scared to fly, you gave me wings. My darling, I look forward everyday to see your big smile. I love you." _

"_When I needed a friend and more, you were there to reassure me." _As the voices kept speaking, Horace suddenly saw the image of someone's face, all shimmery and vague, as though he were looking at the person's reflection in the water, beginning to form in his mind. As well as that, a warm feeling began to heat up inside of his chest. He couldn't understand why.

"_But now, silly thing that I am,_

_For everything you gave me, I still want more._

_I need more than this, and I know you will never understand." _The sobbing of an older woman's voice stopped suddenly, and she said the last line, with sadness in her voice, alone as the other voices all disappeared.

"_You will never know. _

_I love you. I love you." _

The voices all faded away, and a face, as plain as though the person in question was standing right in front of him, appeared out of the shimmery, vague face from before, as though whoever it was had pushed her face up and out of the watery-like reflection. A name, the only name he was suddenly shocked to find that he really cared about as a living man, lit up the darkness surrounding her face.

_Molly. Molly. Molly._

He shook his head furiously, trying to get the image of that face that had been permanently stamped into his subconscious out of his head as he opened his eyes.

It didn't work, and he now repeated a mantra in his head in an effort to stop himself from journeying into an area where he was inexplicably horrified of going. _She didn't _love, love _you, she didn't _love, love_ you, she didn't-_

But, his eyes found that the words that were spoken to him in his head were, indeed, written on the old, stained paper. And at the bottom were words that destroyed his hope that he had hallucinated the whole time when the voices in his head had repeated the poem to him- and that the writer hadn't meant them for him.

"Molly Christoe", and under that, with a + mark separating it, "Horace Mahoney, my giant."

His suddenly weak fingers dropped the paper to the ground. And his otherworldly form soon followed it, crashing to the ground on his knees. His eyes were wide.

He was in shock; just moments before, he was ready to completely throw in the towel in the fight for his sanity. And now… And now he had someone else out there who felt something that couldn't and shouldn't have ever been in his lifetime. He didn't know- or maybe he just didn't know if he _ever _could- if he loved her at all, but what he did know that for the first time in a decade and a half, he felt _something _other than rage or dulled emotions. All of those years of forgetting what feeling was- swept out of the door as an intense feeling of happiness almost made his non-existent heart explode. It was just so… _vivid. _And all at once.

He didn't know how long he was bent over on the ground, out of his car, shocked at the turn of events and at the arresting memories of the small child who he found out had been in love with him, but he stood up in time to realize that it was completely dark outside, without a moon or a star in the sky. And he now had a purpose- a vague purpose- for which he felt instinctively which he must strive for.

What he felt then was what he could finally attribute to being the happiness that could allow him to rest for as long as he needed. The thing that he had searched for in this empty shell of a place, but could not find resided with that woman.

He didn't love her, and he couldn't love her, since he had met her as a child, and she had to be an adult now. She no doubt had all but forgotten him, but he found that he didn't care.

He felt the need to be in her presence like how a man felt the instinctive need to stay alive- and he didn't care about anything else now, that desperate need to be near her the only thing alive to him.


	4. Meanwhile

**Chapter 4- Meanwhile…- Revised**

_Kiss him, goddammit; kiss HIM! _

A man was leaning over the area between where the console of the car, lips puckered, expecting a kiss. After a moment, however, he finally stopped and sat back in his seat, shaking his head and sighing.

He wore a dark brown shirt, which was mostly hidden by a black leather jacket. He was a man who staunchly believed that leather jackets _never _went out of style- although it was not as if he didn't have the proper face to match the jacket. He had a face that looked as though he was a biker. His jelled black hair was an attestment to his attempts at trying to dispel the image, but he had some light strands of his hair sticking out of the jelled mass, slightly clinging to his forehead. Despite the jell, however, he still looked a bit like somebody you'd not want to meet drunk and looking for a fight at a bar. Which was surprising, considering the fact that his voice sounded almost shockingly civilized in comparison to the rugged and tough look of his face. And the fact that he was, in fact, a lawyer.

"Just what in the hell is it with you?" he said, angry. "Do you _want _to make me snap and storm off after another one of your oh,-should-I?/-Shouldn't-I? sessions?" He looked over at Molly for a while, arms crossed and looking at her expectantly.

Molly gulped. "N-No, trust me, I am so ready for-."

Randy, the man in the driver's side seat, cut her off.

"Well, you obviously aren't, or you wouldn't have hesitated." he sighed, then spoke in a softer, more hesitant tone of voice. "Do you feel like I'm pushing you into this relationship, or do I just make you feel uncomfortable?"

Molly gasped. "N-no, I'm just…"

Randy sighed deeply, relieved. "That's good. Unfortunately, I still think we shouldn't see each other like this." Molly made a noise of protest, but Randy stopped her. "Molly, you're used to talking your way out of everything, but just listen to me for once. Okay? Look, you know about the trouble I had with my ex, Kelly, right?" Molly nodded hesitantly. "Well, after she left, I've been picking up the pieces as well as I can, and I think that whatever it is that made you like this, you need to consider what it is doing to you and get over it somehow." He reached out to gently caress her cheek as she looked back at him imploringly. "Because I don't think you'll ever be able to be in a good relationship until you do. And, I need someone positive after what I went through with Kelly. And you, Molly," Randy laughed, still gently rubbing his hand against her cheek. "You're so different from Kelly that it's almost like night and day. You're funny, so smart, humble, sweet, and you've got more class than a member of royalty. But, you can't get into a relationship when you're obviously not over another one."

Molly gasped. "How did you-?"

Randy smiled- that smile where his dimples showed, and his eyes, sad though they were, crinkled up. "I can just tell. Look, all I know is that whoever it is, he or she is obviously a lucky person." _Luckier than me, at least. _Randy thought mournfully.

Molly sat up in her seat, shaking her head. "No, Randy, I'm not lying, I'm not thinking about anyone else but you." _Well, unless you count a dead person._

Randy was silent for a long moment, then he turned to look at her. He wore a humorless upturn of his lips.

"Then kiss me."--

The apartment that sat sandwiched between the more ritzier apartments above and the more "middle-class" apartments below it was best described as mixture of both the higher-level condos and the drabber, less expensive apartments beneath it. It was one of the first apartments upon going upward that featured a balcony, but the difference between it and the more expansive and expensive apartments above it were that the walls seemed to be in need of a new paint job. It also didn't help in separating itself from the lower-level, cheaper apartments that the space in it was decidedly cramped.

The furnishings in the apartment look as though they were all bought from a lifetime of garage-sale-ing, but one room (an admittedly small room, like the rest) in the apartment seemed to have a completely different life of its own. Covered wall-to-wall with books old and new, it looked like the personal library of somebody important.

Aside from the books and their cases, which reached all the way up to the ceiling, and a heavy, steel desk that sat near the center of the room with a green Mac and a printer on it, the room was empty of everything except literature and intellect. The chair pulled up to the desk was a slightly worn computer chair with dark green back and bottom cushions. The wheels on it were so old and roughly used that they could barely move from their spot that was snugly pulled into the desk.

The computer's keyboard featured keys whose lettering had been worn away to mere shadows of the letters they once were. Rings of coffee mugs, pop cans, and cups long past were settled into both sides of the desk, and on top of the printer sat a stack of printed paper, individual pages made into stapled-together packets.

Next to the desk was a huge, old bucket lined with a low level of garbage comprised mostly of gum, toaster pastry wrappers, and crumpled up paper.

After a moment of looking through the room, she realized that she had always found the room as her sanctuary, in the same way that Horace found his convertible an escape from the horrible realities that always surrounded him. Despite all it had done to comfort her, Molly found that she had never stopped a moment to drink in the many good things about the room before. She took a moment to absorb the good, welcome-home feeling that the room always gave her for the briefest, most pure moment.

It only lasted a moment, because a huge mass of muscle pushed her aside to get into the room. Molly bent to the side to watch as her only living companion shoved his muscular frame past her to walk to the other side of the room. He looked back at her.

The dog she had decided to bring with her from that junkyard incident the winter before had finally earned the name Behemoth, and had slipped into the role of Molly's room mate and guardian awkwardly and slowly- learning things like, "No-boy-that-man-didn't-want-to-kill-me-he-just-wanted-the-time," "The-couch-is-not-a-chew-toy," and, "Oh-my-lord,-you-cannot-lay-on-my-lap-or-you'll-crush-every-bone-in-my-body-AH-OUUUUCCHHH-DAMMIT-THAT-HURTS!" Other than that, the only "incident" he could rightfully be accused of in any court of law would have been urinating on someone's elegant red car while Molly was grabbing a newspaper from a sidewalk machine and not watching him.

As for Molly, she was getting used to the, for the most part, silent sentinel who always seemed to be by her side.

She walked over to the computer, planning to lose herself in some dumb web game or by checking on something she had been planning to buy on E-Bay. Not that she really cared about either, in reality. As she walked to the center of the room, she felt the familiar brush of dog fur against her leg as Behemoth came to sit next to her side and stare forward in the strange way that he always did.

"Hey, Beh." Molly said softly. Behemoth grunted in a way that could have equally been a grunt or a burp. He didn't look away from his blank forward stare.

"Strange dog." Molly murmured.

She glanced down at him and made a mental note to bring the huge blanket spread out in her bedroom that was Behemoth's dog bed into her library, next to her computer chair. She figured that he spent more time nuzzled up to her feet than in it at night, so he should be comfortable while apparently watching over her in the small library. She turned away from the huge dog and turned her Mac on, getting onto her e-mail account and looking for anything she had. One e-mail was left on it, and it made a lump form in Molly's throat. It was the e-mail Randy had sent her, asking her to come with him for a date.

She clicked on it, not remembering what he had said in it and suddenly wanting to remember it.

'Molly, I know you're a very shut in and shy person, (_You idiot, kiss him, kiss him, kiss him!!) _but would you ever consider going out somewhere with me (_You're not over him, and that was why this happened to you). _And, if you don't like that, we could just go somewhere to talk (_Did you even LIKE him, or were you just kidding yourself?) a_nd I promise that I can make it a very nice night out, Please _(Walk out of his car, Molly, walk out with your head held up high after you shot one of your friends down like that)_ get back to me on this, I-'

And then Molly couldn't take anymore, because although she felt very, very awful about what had happened between her and Randy, she remembered that when she looked at Randy after he had told her to kiss him to prove that she was ready for a new relationship, she could only see Horace's sullen, yet beloved features in Randy's humorless face. And it hurt.

It hurt to feel as though she belonged to someone and would live and love only thinking of him- and it hurt that one of the reasons for it was how at a young age she had put some man on a pedestal who would become the unattainable mould for how she would want her love to be. No other man could ever compare to him for her, and she just wished every moment of her life since she had come out of the junkyard that winter before that she could just let go of her feelings for him. Not only that, but now she was mostly just ashamed to think of her actually believing that the love of her life was somehow thriving in his old home after his death.

She had never forgotten the odd dream she had the night before she had gone to the junk yard. Since she had left, she had kidded herself that what she believed was that Horace was simply doing ghost-related things while she was there. Deep inside of her, however, she recalled the weeping, bleeding man in her dream. Could his very spirit have been killed?

Would she never be able to see him again, even when she herself died?

She shut the computer and light off before she made her shoulders-slumped walk way back to her bedroom to lie on her double bed with the covers pulled up all the way on her, because, despite the heat outside, she had an air conditioner jacked up to keep the room at a good temperature. Her mind had done its hardest to get that upsetting thought freed from her mind.

She was barely aware of Behemoth hopping into bed and lying his huge head on her feet, because she was now busy replaying how depressed and let down Randy had looked as he had turned away from her earlier, and drove her back to her apartment complex with very little talk between them.

"_Here's where you get off." _Randy had said, not turning to look at her as he parked next to her apartment.

"_Look, Randy…" _Molly had started, feeling obligated to say something- anything_- _after what had just happened. _"I really do like you. I just don't think I'm going to be over him very soon." _Randy had been silent for a long moment, digesting what she had said. Then, for no reason that Molly could understand, Randy suddenly smiled.

"_So, it is a __him,__ huh?" _Molly tried to smile in return, but couldn't manage it.

"_Yeah, was a he, at least."_

"_Was? What's that supposed to imply?" _He finally turned to look at her.

"_He's dead. Been dead a… while." _Molly said softly.

She looked down, and a long silence stretched thin in the car until Molly opened the passenger's side door.

"_Wait-."_

It was Molly's turned to interrupt him. _"No, not now. Look, you were right before, and I think that it's best that we don't mention this until I can get my other feelings for him straightened out." _She began to walk away from the car, thinking that she just wanted to go to her apartment and try her hand at forgetting what had just happened. She did, however, hear the sound of the driver's side door on Randy's car opening and shutting, then Randy practically running after her.

"_Wait- who was he?" _He said after he finally caught up with her, spinning her around to face him. Molly looked at him, her eyebrows creased.

"_Why does it matter? Just forget that I ever said anything, alright? It doesn't matter." _Randy shook her gently- and act that surprised Molly, because of how gentle he usually was.

"_I don't know why, but it _does _matter to me! Who was he to you?!" _Molly stared at him for a short moment, took a deep breath, and unlatched his hands from her arms. He blinked, and had the decency to look slightly embarrassed when she did unlatch his fingers.

"_Forget I said anything, he doesn't mean anything."_ However, right after she said that, she felt herself thinking, _If by "anything", that is, you mean "everything"._ She flushed a deep red blush and stormed off for her apartment door.

"_Wait… stop… Molly!" _Randy yelled, trying to get to her before she slammed her apartment complex's front door in his face. On her way up, she could hear him yelling for her for a short while, but that soon, thankfully, ended.


	5. Remants of All Kind

**Chapter 5- Remnants Of All Kind  
**

The light of morning offered no warmth to the huge specter that walked through the streets, unseeing and uncaring of anything that sped through the middle of the packed road where he walked.

Not that anything _could _bother him in his journey through the jammed up city.

He had walked through places of immense countrysides, passed rivers, and had even walked through a lake- but despite the fact that he did not have to feel anything, he could not help but dislike this place most of all. In all actuality, the fact that he actually disliked something surprised him more than anything.

He was feeling again.

He attributed it to the fact that he we getting closer and closer to the city. To Molly.

He should have felt… well, good, but he couldn't help but feel both worried and frightened. Every time he thought of the concept of feeling again, he remembered that it was his feelings and emotions that had killed him. His rage…

He looked up from the pavement, bored with watching the occasional vehicle or body go through him, unseeing and uncaring of his presence. For the most part.

As odd as it was, he found that since there was a larger amount of people here, there was a bigger chance that the poor souls who could actually see things they shouldn't without special glasses could see him. He had seen a look of surprise and horror on the faces of a few people who had been going past or through him since he had walked onto the highway leading to the city, and he had long since stopped caring about those people, since he figured that since he hadn't had any run-ins with those awful spells that there was nobody else who might have the capacity and understanding to bring him back down to his knees.

He gazed upwards at the feet of many buildings that towered- even over _him_- along the streets. He was dully aware of the fact that he had never, in his entire life or death, seen surroundings such as this.

Bustling people and fast, fast movement surrounded him at all times, making him feel as though he was being suffocated by the many things around him. He could only hope that if Molly was in this place, she was somewhere that was a little more empty and open, because he was sure that dead or not, he would lose his mind in this place unless he could find some place with just a hint of peace and solitude.

He was now looking at people who were walking across a crosswalk- but not really watching. But then, something strange seized him at the sight of a shape moving slowly across the crosswalk. His pale blue eyes scanned the crosswalk in front of him madly. And then…

He saw the woman walking across the pedestrian walk, and felt as though he just got shocked by looking at her. As he looked at her, he began to digest everything about her that he could.

Walking next to her with his head coming up to her stomach walked a huge dog, tethered to the woman by a leash. A quick glance at the woman, and Horace felt as though he was looking at someone who held an air of both elegance and at the same time, immense fragility. Despite the fact that she was heavy, he was first under the impression that she looked more like a living, breathing doll than anything else. that is, until she turned in his direction slightly to try to pull a cloud of dark hair away from her face as the dog pulled her forward ruthlessly. He then saw that her face looked more like two almost hollow spaces where her eyes should be with two splotches that were almost as dark as the hollows under them. He knew within moments of looking at those splotches under her eyes that they were remnants of long nights awake.

He focused on calming himself, but it was difficult, as usual, to control himself. He had never, in his memory of being on earth, felt surer of what he did right then. It was Molly, but…

But one thought nagged him as he watched her stride in slow motion across the street. Mainly, why he suddenly wanted nothing more than to touch her- no, hold her. Sure, he was her friend, was _always _her friend, but these feelings…

He knew in his heart that they bordered on something much, much less pure.

He only thought about this for a moment before the dog that was walking the woman (it could hardly be called anything else than that) stopped dead in its tracks, and turned to stare directly at him.

Horace suddenly knew that the creature was looking right at him- not at the cars near him, not at the many people in the cars near him, and not even at the small, yipping white Pomeranian that was barking madly in the big dog's direction from a sleek black car ahead of Horace. He was looking _right at him_.

The dog, being as awesomely big as he was, stopped the woman from moving quite effortlessly by just sitting down in the middle of the crosswalk. It took her a moment to register that she was now pulling a tight leash that could have been attached to one of the huge buildings around them for all she accomplished by tugging at it. Her mouth moved in words that Horace could not hear. She glared at the dog and attempted to tug him by his leash, which did absolutely nothing. The dog didn't even flinch or look away from where Horace stood between a taxi and a pale green SUV.

Horace might have laughed at the sight of the woman trying desperately to pull the hulking beast by a leash that looked as though the dog could break apart in a heart beat if it really wanted to and looking and yelling at him. Suddenly, the woman looked up from her misbehaving mutt, and up at Horace. If he had lungs, Horace was sure that he would have sucked his breath in. Could she see him? Would she?

Would she want to?

As he knew, although many animals, like her dog, obviously, could see him, so small a fraction of people could see him that it would have to be a miracle if she could…

But that was it- she glanced up (no screaming, no backing away in fear, or even a goddamn look of recognition!) and she looked back down at her dog.

Horace couldn't believe it, but he suddenly felt as deflated as a balloon. Had he actually expected this woman who he could just barely remember to see him? Well, had he?

He felt just a bit better when he watched her continue to attempt to move the creature that was much stronger than her and did not want to move. Still the dog stared at him unblinkingly, giving Horace both an unconscious chill and a feeling of foreboding. The oddness and humor of the situation turned sinister when Horace glanced up at the dangling, aged spotlight above the crosswalk. He swallowed some imaginary spit as he realized that even though he had felt little to no time had passed as he was watching the woman, it seemed as though it was time for the light to change green…

He looked up at the cars surrounding him, now seeing them as things that were capable of rocketing at the doll-like woman and killing her instead of just as annoyances in which he'd have to momentarily endure yodeling to their favorite songs or be forced to eavesdrop in on angry idiots arguing into some black device pressed to their ear as they drove when he passed through their vehicles. Surely the ones near him then must see the woman with her immovable beast, but that did not destroy the danger whatsoever- there was still another side of the crosswalk, and motorists, eager to speed through the next green light, might hit her before realizing that the crosswalk was not empty. He looked over at the stubborn dog, wanting more than anything for the damn dog to just get the hell off of the crosswalk before tragedy struck.

_Get her off of the road before you kill her!_

The dog finally blinked and unceremoniously trotted to the other end of the crosswalk to join the other pedestrians who had been walking through the crosswalk with the woman dragging behind him helplessly, looking relieved.

Once the fear of the moment began to leave with the woman and her dog, Horace believed that he could think about what he was going to do next.

The trouble was that he had kind of allowed himself to get into a kind of mindset where he was going on a quest to find this girl who was supposedly in love with him, and he was, well…

_Hadn't thought further than that, you dumb shit, didn't ya? _It was his a male's voice, drunk, slurry, and angry. _I always told ya you were nothing more than a big fuckin' dumber n' shit ape, now, what are you gonna do?_

Horace stopped or a second. Just who did that voice belong to- and why was it so familiar?

The voice did have a good point, however. What _was _he going to do? --

Molly took Beh to the dog park long enough for him to quietly add his essence to the grass in a corner of the park and walk with her away from the other dogs (ALL of which were small than him) that tried to attract his attention. He didn't so much as glance down at them, but he kept walking next to Molly, only occasionally looking over at the over excited puppy that was trying to nip at him with a look that seemed to say, _What are you, a complete dolt?_ Molly might have laughed if she had not gotten used to his eerily human-like mannerisms.

After Molly slammed the gate to the dog park shut behind her, she was able to stuff another damn stick of lemon-flavored gum into her mouth. She was about to walk off from where she had thrown the gum's wrapper into a trash bin, when she noticed how unbearably _bright _everything was. She winced and pulled out a pair of cheap-o sunglasses from her purse.

When she had finished, she looked down at Beh, and was not surprised to see him sitting stoic still next to her. "Weird dog." She hissed at him for perhaps the amazing three-thousandth time. She pulled on his leash before she felt the tautness of the leash that was connected to the, once again, immobile dog.

Molly's eyebrows creased. "Beh? Beh?! Come on, you- we've got to get home before the morning rush-"

She might have just as well eaten her words, because realization hit her like a ton of bricks as a jumble of cars stopped in the street. She groaned.

The colossal morning rush in which the gerbils all went to work in their little metal exercise wheels had already started the dreaded but unavoidable morning traffic jam. Molly blew out a hissing breath. "Sonofabitch. Beh, get your ass off of the sidewalk before I drag it to the pound." Desperate, Molly bent down on her knees, and grabbed onto he great dog's muzzle, attempting to turn it her way. "Do you know what they'll do to you? Hmmm? They'll inject you with all kinds of things that'll make all of your already thinning hair fall right out- yeah, I said it, Beh, and it _needed _to be said. Your hair is falling _out_, and how do you like that?"

There was no response.

Molly groaned, the aspect of walking home through the horrors of the traffic jam making her feel like forcing the already nearly huge enough to be a horse beast onto his feet so she could ride his weird butt home. Where she would, admittedly, spend a good part of the morning feeding him things out of her refrigerator out of guilt of having made him do it.

"Beh? Beh, I am not playing with you, so either move your ass, or-."

A whoosh of icy cold air made Molly suddenly stop talking to the dog. Cold air?

Around the city, it never felt cold during the spring months, so she felt just slightly spooked. Along with the fact that it felt cold, Molly also felt as though there was something strange about the cold whoosh of air. Something about how it instinctively felt against her body made her spine stiffen and the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

If that wasn't enough to make her want to just get the hell out of there, a whispery, otherworldly voice talking softly in her ear made her entire body bristle up.

"_Is iiiittttt yoooooouuuuu, Mooooolllllllllyyyyyyy?"_

Molly screamed. Oh dear lord, no!

It seemed to last for only a moment before it was gone. She could tell that it- whatever it was- was gone. After a moment of looking down at her oversized dog, however, she could not allow herself to lie to herself about just who she knew it had been.--

Admittedly, racing after Molly and trying to talk to her through the barrier that was what separated the dead from the un-psychic wasn't too bright, but what was he to do?

He had been able to speak to her, though, but why did even that fade away? But why, he had always been able to, at least, touch or sort-of speak to the non-psychic, but he was now focusing all of his energy into grabbing onto her neck, her torso, her legs, her head- anything. And he was now yelling her name as loud as he was able to, uncaring of anything other than making her aware of him.

His memory conjured up thoughts of of the special symbols, those odd words. Yes, if there was anything from his memories that he could salvage, it was that things had been different before he had come into contact with those spells, those talismans of his world. They had changed him, for the better or for the worse.

"Big boy, I know being inconspicuous was never in your poorly stocked bag of tricks, but I can tell you that you're wasting your time."

Horace turned around. At first, he couldn't see who had spoken, but a moment of focusing on the road itself made it very much apparent who had been talking.

He was looking at the woman decked in attire that could only be a very smutty take on a military uniform with a skirt that brushed against her mid thighs, Horace immediately believed that he must be going barking mad.

It took him a moment to recognize the red arm band that was wrapped around her upper right arm, and the symbol on it. He had no memories of such knowledge in his living life, but a short year in which he had the misfortune to be followed by the weepy ghost of a World War Two veteran gave him the ability to recognize that he was, in fact, looking at a strange, strange female Nazi uniform.

The woman in question was leaning against a car that was stopped in the traffic jam with her arms crossed, her ass against the passenger's side door. When the woman finally lifted her head up high enough for him to see her face from the shadow under her hat's brim, Horace saw she had a rather abnormal paleness to her skin- and although he was quite certain that she was not one of his kind, she certainly did not feel in the least bit human. His every sense told him that, as well as warned him that she felt immensely powerful.

Any feelings that she was a living, breathing human stopped as the car she was resting her ass against sped up, eager to get ahead one spot. As it moved, the car behind it pulled up in its old spot, its hood near where she was resting against- but it wasn't below where she was resting. She was leaning on thin air.

"What are you?"

She smirked, revealing somewhat pointy, pure white, straight teeth.

"Funny you should ask, Mr… Juggernaut, I believe it was?"--


	6. The Woman With The Barracuda Grin

**Chapter 6- The Woman With The Barracuda Grin**

"Who are you?"

The woman looked back at him, a smile twisting her lips. "Maybe just a messenger, and nothing more." She was still slightly reclined back in that odd position, but extended an arm in his direction. "Would you like to go somewhere to talk?"

Horace blinked a couple of times in disbelief, but nodded wordlessly once he allowed himself to believe that, _yes_, she was real.

The woman smiled- a barracuda's wide, saw-blade grin, and pushed herself up into a standing position before walking over to Horace.

"The park's nice. Green, full of life- practically everything neither of us stand for." She gave him a beguiling look, and walked a few steps away in the direction of the area behind the gated off dog park, never taking her eyes off of Horace. Horace followed her, cooperating, but all the while wondering just what in the hell he had stumbled into, coming to this city.

They began walking past trees- which was a relief as well as a difference in comparison to what he had to walk past for what felt like far too long. And, eventually, they came to a grassy, hilly area, where families were grouped together, enjoying picnics, laughing and playing, flying kites, and playing Frisbee with their eager dogs. It almost felt like too much happiness and perfection in just one place for Horace.

"Do you think anyone here can see us?" Horace suddenly asked.

"No; I don't believe so." She murmured, looking around at the people with interest. She finished quickly, looking back up at Horace. "So we won't be interrupted."

"Excuse me," Horace said, his arms going backward to rub one of his shoulder blades under his old uniform. "But what is this all about?"

The woman looked at him cattily. "You're strange in many ways, you know. So... unique- even for a wraith."

Horace stared at her for a short moment, then scoffed. "_I'm_ strange?"

The woman stared at him for a moment as though confused, then dropped her gaze down to her chest. She laughed. "Oh- this? I guess I should explain this." She looked at him expectantly for awhile, until Horace gave in with a sigh.

"Yeah, okay, I'm listening."

"Ever heard of that saying that it's Christmas in heaven every day?" Horace looked at her with a look that seemed to voice his disbelief clearly- without any words needing to be spoken. The woman sighed. "...Well, where I come from, let's just say it's Halloween everyday- which would explain my choice of attire."

"And, where would that be?" Horace asked, somehow getting the feeling that he could already guess where she was going with this.

She looked up at him with a faint smile on her lips, making her look softer than if she had exposed her pointed teeth. "Hell."-


	7. A Refusable Deal

**Chapter 7-A Refusable Deal  
**

After the talk Horace and the mysterious woman had, who, he learned, was called Lilith, they found a grassy, shaded part of a hill in the park to sit on. Horace was staring forward blankly, feeling as though a bomb- maybe an A-bomb, it certainly felt that catastrophic- had hit him.

At that moment, he felt as though he were experiencing all of the gut-wrenching aftershocks at the moment- one after another, becoming almost polite in how they all seemed quieter than their forerunner.

Aside from the sound effect he imagined hearing, he was also thinking about what Lilith had said.

"_First of all," She had said, her face becoming less flirtatious, and more serious than it had been before. "This... what you're doing now, is not typical of a ghost. At all. You're not supposed to be aware, and you shouldn't be capable of traveling long distances." She sighed deeply. "And you're regaining sanity, at least on some level, since you came into contact with a piece from your life." __Horace didn't answer this, he was simply silent, so Lilith took the hint and continued to speak._ "_You've also been growing more sane, however- faster than any ghost I've ever witnessed. And, moreover, there's only a few ways that can make a ghost "aware" of their passing," She gave him a kind upturn of her lips. "And you're apparently in the shocks of having two at the same time."_

"_What are you... talking... about?" Horace asked slowly, feeling as though understanding was building inside of him. _

"_You're actually aware of the deep, deep love a living being has for you, and you've been exposed to Dark Zodiac spells." Horace was too speechless to deny or agree to either, so he turned his gaze to staring blankly off to the side. After a long, long moment, Lilith spoke, kindness in her tone._

"_You're really quiet, huh?" Silence. "It's alright- it must be a shock. So... unless you have questions for me, I can move onto why I'm here..." _

"_How many ghosts are there like me?" _

_it was apparently Lilith's turn to be silent. She finally spoke, her soft voice back. "My best guess would be around five percent of all cases I've worked." She stopped, paused, then spoke again. "No, no, scratch that, three percent sounds more like it-"_

"_What does that mean for me- being different?" Horace mumbled. _

"_It just means that you're... uh... just different. And that thatnks to some help from me, you might just be gaining power of your emotions sometime soon- you won't be uncontrollable like a garden-variety angered spirit." There was more silence after that, Lilith was obviously wanting a reaction from Horace. It took a moment, but Horace finally got the idea of what she wanted from him._

"_Hm. Different..."_

_Lilith turned to him, sighed, and spoke up. "Look, I think it's time I get down to brass tacks here- I'm here for a reason. For _your _help."_

_Horace made a surprised sound deep in his throat, and looked at her with eyes full of mistrust. "Help? Help... as in what?"_

_Lilith looked away from him. "Your fellow ghosts, after they left that prison that that madman made in order to harness their power... well, let's just say we were expecting it, but there's rules in place, and..."_

"_Fellow ghosts?" Horace nearly whispered, confused. "What-?"_

"_Oh- I should have known you wouldn't have remembered all of it- the spells have that effect on your kind. Believe me when I say that those five months you can't remember a long while ago- do you remember that? Huh? A long track of time in which you can't remember much of what happened during it?"_

_Horace opened his mouth, ready to deny whatever it was she was talking about, but a memory suddenly flared to life in his head, bringing with it the sharp, metallic, barbaric, absolutely intoxicating scent of... of..._

"_It was an autumn night- and I was walking around in a craze, wanting to kill something- anything. ...I felt the presence of all of those men, so many of them, so many... and then I smelled blood. So much... blood... then I heard this voice... this voice... Spells..."_

_He was awakened from his trance-like state of remembering by Lilith tapping him gently in the ribs. "Yeah. After that, you spent some time in a glass box- where all of your primal instincts took over. Hm, I'm not surprised you don't remember much of it." She looked up at Horace, and saw that dazed look in his eyes. "Well, I won't go into details- but I will tell you this; there were twelve other trapped spirits in that place, and about ten of them aren't as happy as puppies right now. We need help from someone who's not from Hell to deal with ten of the eleven ghosts- and we think you're the man for the job. We're willing to offer you something we're sure you'll want dearly."_

_Horace was clearly in shock; unbelieving in what he was hearing. "So... you want me... to go after these eleven ghosts you claim I was trapped with for months on end..."_

"_Ten ghosts." She corrected._

"_- And I should do this... why?"_

_Lilith smiled. "For her. The girl- I know how she feels about you, and love or not, you'll want to remain by her side. And you see, the fact that she's not that very small part of the living population who can see your kind without enchanted spectacles, it would be hard to enjoy a good existence with her. We can give you the powers you desire to become a part of her life- and we're offering you ten different powers that normal ghosts don't have, in exchange for a ghost catch per power. So, what do you say?" She looked smug- pretty, pretty smug. So, it was no surprise that when Horace made a snorting noise, her smirk melted in a scowl._

"_I'll have to say- no thank-_you,_ woman. I'm perfectly content to stay invisible to her- haunting her sounds better than expecting her to accept me."_

"_Oh- come on!" Lilith said, angrily. "You know how she feels about you- are you in some kind of weird denial I wasn't made aware of, because unless I checked, it's better to be adored than reviled, and... and just think of what'll happen if you don't make your presence known! What'll happen if some- some hunk decides to take her on a date, huh?! Did you ever think of that- how you'll react?"_

_Horace was silent, staring back at her motionlessly as a scene that Lilith had described took place in his head- a silhouetted, shadowy version of _her _ sitting across from a shorter, more elegant man than he could ever be, placing her little (oh so small!) hand on his in the middle of the velvet-covered table, both of them laughing so loudly that it felt like razors cutting, digging, going through Horace's skull... wait... What was the matter with him? Why should he care...?_

"_Will you at least think this over?" It was Lilith's voice, the nervousness in it bringing him back from his personal hell of laughing, mocking silhouettes and questions that both horrified him and stung at him like enraged wasps. _

_"I mean, this is a big decision to make a on a whim- and you're obviously in some kind of a delusional state, because, trust me, if she has the power to turn you like... well, how you just looked, you'll eventually want much more than to haunt her. You can believe me on that."_

_Horace's face tightened up as he felt himself coming fully back to rights, and ready to deny anything she was liable to throw at him. _

_"I don't love her." He said coldly._

"_Then what was the idea behind coming all the way here? Another decision based solely on a whim?"_

"_Hey," Horace said, snarling. "If you know so much about me, why not explain something to me- if you say you're from hell, and so I'm guessing you're also saying there's a heaven, why is it I was born like this," He pointed to his neck, or, at least, the huge hump that protruded out of it. "I may not remember much, but I remember sadness and shame!"  
_

_After he finished, there was a long, long silence, then Lilith softly said, "I don't know, Big Boy- I really don't understand it myself. If I did, I'd be able to explain to myself why it was that in life I was miserable, too. Well, I can tell you that the angels are pretty snotty, that may have something to do with the bad state of negligence the world's in- and how backed up all of the paper work is on both the top, and the bottom. But, if you want real answers, I guess the big man himself is the only real way to go. And none of us understand why it is he creates the rules of the universe like how he does... but he does. And, as a result, celestial forces are mostly kept from interfering, except when we can find loopholes," She whistled. "And, boy, if there aren't that many of them."_

_Horace was silent again, this time staring up at the sky. "So... is that about... it?"_

_Lilith gave him a tender nod. It was wasted on him, since he was still gazing up at the sky. _

_She sighed. _"_Look- how about we find somewhere to sit? I know this is a shock-"_

"_I'll sit," Horace said, looking back down, but not at Lilith. "But I won't do whatever it is you want."_

"_Look," She said, her voice raising back up. "This is NOT a decision to make on such a fettered state of mind- you need to calm down, take a look at the situation, and decide what you think is best- and right now may not be the right minute- hour- hell, even _week_- to decide. But I believe you should think it over, and there, I've said my peace, so we can both settle down now." _

_She sounded pretty harassed- heck, worse than harassed. But Horace didn't really notice._

_He was silent as he hunkered down to the ground, his mind processing everything it could at once- the proposition she had made, the silhouetted form of Molly enjoying the company of someone else other than him- and for some reason, the image of a little blond haired toddler thrusting her chubby fingers through the holes in a chain link fence, her eyes adoring..._

_It all felt like too much, so he eventually settled on replaying the conversation in his head- at least, until Lilith spoke._

"_I gotta get going, big guy. If... when you decide to change your mind, just pick up any phone, and say, "Lilith" in it. I'll come- and we can get the paperwork all sorted out so you can get your first power in time to spend some time with her."_

_Turning his head to the side, readying himself to say something snarky like, "Oh, don't count on me calling," he was surprised to realize that Lilith was gone- disappeared as though she had just been a twisted form of an imaginary friend for a nineteen-year old ghost like himself._


	8. Panic Revisited

**Chapter 8- Panic Revisited**

The people grouped around the apartment building were treated to the site of Molly, usually calm and cool, running up to the entrance of the apartment, her dog running with her. She was out of breath, her dark hair stuck to her face. She was trembling all over.

It was not a sight that was missed by the small crowd of questionably dressed women who stood near the entrance of the apartment. One in particular, a dirty-dish blond-haired one, spoke up, her voice mocking. "Nearly got hit by a bus? Didja get mugged? Did your dog attack someone?"

As Molly ascended the steps to the entrance, she didn't spare a look at the women leering up at her, laughing. They were the street walkers who usually grouped next to the apartment, either getting ready to turn in for the day, or getting ready to work the day shift in their unending search for Johns. As they found a meeting spot near that apartment, they eventually worked out an unspoken agreement with the woman they neither liked nor hated. They could mock her all they wanted, but as long as they didn't attempt to jump her or anything, they wouldn't be reported to the police, and Behemoth wouldn't dive at them if he happened to be near Molly when they would attempt it. So, it was a usual thing for the women to leer at Molly whenever she left or entered the building, insinuating a mugging.

Molly opened the door, then waited for Beh to follow her inside before shutting the door behind them. Her heart was beating so fast in her chest, she could barely breath above the level of a kid having an asthma attack.

But that was understandable; she had, after all, just run ten blocks back home, and she could swear that the adrenaline that was rampaging through her system was nearly deafening. She felt like she was going to either throw up, burst into tears, or both. The feeling of being confused about what her body wanted to do seemed to only make her feel worse. The only good or lucky thing about the whole situation was that Behemoth was as compliant as he always was, following her no matter what speed she wanted to run.

She finally lifted her head, and she was relieved to find no one else there. With the small worry of being seen gone, she allowed herself to flop backwards, the only thing holding her up the door. She panted in catches of air, her chest heaving violently. Molly moaned, feeling as though every organ was on fire from the run and from the shock of what had happened.

She didn't know how long she spent there, heaving in air as fast as she possibly could. Finally, however, she lifted her head. The world was shaking and spinning in front of her, making her feel all the more sick. After blinking several times, her vision managed to clear slightly, allowing her to concentrate once again.

I HAVE to get upstairs. She thought to herself. I'm having a panic attack!

As she considered the stairs, she realized that she could never make it up the stairs without passing out. She already felt near a blackout, and a walk up some stairs would be like trying her hand at suicide.

Which only left one other alternative... The elevator.

She looked at it, across the floor, and she remembered, with a sinking heart, the many times she had come up to the elevator, trying to open the doors, only to realize that it was, once again, out of order. But, faced with no other choice, she struggled to drag herself across the floor, trying all the while to calm herself down before she blacked out.

When she finally made it to the elevator, she pressed in the Up button, and squeezed her eyes shut. _Please, please... _

And then, the sound of the groaning doors wheezing open brought her eyes back open with a sigh of relief. She scrambled inside, leaning against a wall for support, and waiting until she heard the clack of Beh's nails on the linoleum before she reached over to the floor controls. She pushed in her room's floor, and sank back against a wall as the doors closed, and she could feel the somewhat comforting feel of the elevator shooting up in its slow way.

As it went up, Molly found herself wishing that no one else would get on- she didn't know how long she could hold herself back from going off of the handlebars, but a small space like the elevator she was in then would not be a good place to be when she was also feeling close to tapping distance to fainting. Thankfully, the doors opened up at her floor without much of a hitch, and she started to hurry to her own door, which was four doors down down from the elevator. When she got there, however, she realized that she had locked it. But, as she was digging furiously through her purse, the stray memory of that voice she had heard at the dog park entrance returned.

When she had heard it as a kid, she might have been able to accept it better than she could as an adult. Back then, after all, she was deeply in love with Mr. Murder, and was much more accepting. Now, though, her acceptance had to contend with her own own common sense, and the fact that she felt that she was moving on from missing him, slowly but surely.

"Oh, thank you Jesus." she whispered as pulled out her key. She hurriedly shoved it into the door's slot, shoving the door open and closed behind her as she heard the sound of Behemoth hurrying into the room. As she slammed the door, she didn't hesitate to lock it, pushing the deadbolt into place, and well as the chain. When she finished, she began to walk a shaky walk over to her faded powder blue loveseat. As she sat down, she made a slight whimpering sound and fell on her side.

She stared blankly forward at the area in front of her unblinkingly before shutting her eyes as hard as she could. She started to concentrate on her breathing, that heavy, desperate sound, before starting her inner conversation. It was something that she was used to in times of desperation and immense worry- and it was always calming to Molly.

_Okay, okay, it's obvious that I hallucinated. Yeah._

_No, that's like saying that what happened a decade ago wasn't real, either. Would you say that that attack we went through wasn't real?_

_Well... let's be reasonable- talking to each other like this isn't exactly sane, no? Who's to say we didn't make up that attack?_

_Oh, so what were those bruises about?_

_Let's be real for a minute, okay- if that's alright with you. We both know what self-inflicted wounds are, so-_

_Are you insinuating- so, scratch that- saying that we hurt ourselves? That we whacked ourselves in the sides, then imagined the whole ordeal? _

_I just think that we ought to look at this from all angles..._

_Well, excuse me, but how is saying that we bruised ourselves on purpose more sane than admitting that you believe in ghosts?_

_... I meant that we believed that the spirit of our deceased true love came back and attacked us, I was not discrediting the existence of... ghosts._

_Sounded to me like you were, don't backtrack. As I was saying, we don't need to be deluding ourselves here- since it was oh so obviously Horace back there, we need to think what we're going to do about his arrival- it's obvious now what he's gonna try to do-_

_Oh, so we're gonna call Ghost Busters now? Let me go find the goddamned phone book- although I think it's 1-800-ghost, but I can't be too sure... and stop this nonsense- that was NOT Horace back there._

_First of all, don't patronize me, second, do you know of any other ghouls who'd come back to talk to us?..._

After that, the voices in her head dimmed into a bright haze, lulling into a sound that was just calming enough to fall asleep to. When she finally woke up, the blaring afternoon light was showing from the sky outside of the window in the living room, and she could hear the sounds of one of her neighbors enjoying a strenuous, loud bout of sex. Her panic attack had, thankfully, subsided.

Swinging her legs off of the couch, she heard a soft noise on the ground from the object where her covered feet hit. She looked down. Behemoth was lying on the ground next to the couch, seemingly fast asleep. He was always like that- lying near her, always by far the most loyal living being she had ever met. Fighting the urge to wake Beh up with an ear scratch, she got up, blinked drowsily at the bright light coming from her bare window, and made her way into her small kitchen. It wasn't until she heard the noise of her shoes clopping on the kitchen's yellow-stained tile that she realized that she was wearing shoes.

She looked down at her shoes with a bemused expression, her head heavy with grogginess.

She could not, for the life of her, understand why she was wearing shoes- she couldn't think of a reason why she'd be wearing shoes and she certainly had no clue about the panic she had experienced earlier.

She shrugged, and began to toss the shoes off of her feet, sighing as she pulled the socks off after them, wiggling her toes at the feel of the cool linoleum beneath her bare feet. She walked over to the fridge, opened it, and reached inside for the bright orange jug in the front. She pulled it out and yanked off the top, looking at the label that read, "Sunnyhill Farms' Orange Juice" before swallowing mouthful after mouthful of the drink. When she finished, she put it back in the fridge and leaned on the fridge door by her elbow. She stared at the contents of the fridge, wanting more than anything to grab that apple pie she bought on a whim last friday at the grocery store. A quick rub of her fleshy abdomen, however, brought her back to earth with a heavy _thud._

Diet, diet, diet- the last new year's had to be the third in a row in which she promised herself that she would lose weight. Grimacing as her stomach roiled loudly, she reached deep into the belly of the squat machine, pulling out a brightly colored package of yogurt. She walked from the fridge, picked up a spoon from her loudly squeaking drawer, then made her way to the living room. Halfway through the kitchen, however, a stab of pain shot through her head, making her wince loudly and grab at the side of her head, dropping the spoon.

"Oh, shit, shit, shit..." She hissed. "Happens every time I nap... Ow... where's the pain killers?"

She winced and made her way through the living room, hand planted firmly on her head. As she passed her couch, her eyes glanced to the side- and she saw the door. As she looked at the two locks that were firmly in place, she began to remember her panic attack.

_What the hell...? _

She unwillingly remembered the moment that had occurred earlier that day, and fear began to return. She began to look around the living room, her head turning in every direction in a blind panic, expecting Horace to come charging at her, wielding a knife or a bat.

Eventually, she was satisfied that she wasn't going to be charged at, and she began to allow herself the luxury of calming down.

_Alright, alright, if I was going to be attacked, it would have been while I was asleep. Calm down, calm down..._

Reassuring herself, however, didn't make her feel better. As always seemed to be the case with her, making herself busy was the only way to calm her down. So, with that thought in mind, she walked into the bathroom, used the tap water from her sink to swallow three ibuprofen tablets, and walked into the living room, trying her hardest to not think about Horace.

But, as she passed into the kitchen, looking at the ground for her socks, shoes, and the spoon, she realized, startled, that none of the objects were anywhere to be seen on the linoleum floor.

Looking around for everything in a blind panic, she threw open her closet door, and found her shoes- with her socks tucked neatly into them- in the closet. After that, she scrambled into the kitchen, looking around for a sign as to where the spoon disappeared to. It didn't take her very long to find it.

It was in the empty sink, looking as though it had been sprayed with water from the faucet.

As she looked down at that shiny spoon, she felt her hand creep up to her neck, where she hung onto there as though for dear life.


	9. When Everything's Wrong

**Chapter 9- When Everything's Wrong Revised**

After he had finished that puzzling- and worrying- talk with Lilith, Horace had decided to continue along with his earlier plan of sticking close to Molly. The only difference between how he had managed to follow Molly into this godforsaken city and how he went about following her was that it was easier to find her. And, also unlike the many emotionally draining weeks he had spent following her scent entirely, he found that even when her smell cut off abruptly, another scent- the dog's- never fell off. Which was strange, because the only way a scent could be carried over for the many blocks the dog and Molly must have run would have been if the dog had been consciously aware of the scent he was leaving, and had concentrated on leaving it behind in an unbroken trail.

Strange.

Thanks, chiefly, to the dog's psychic smell, and to Molly's own that stunk of fright, he found a building in which the trail lead into. Looking at it (and the women in loud, unconcealing clothing who flanked the entrance way), he felt very leery.

For a moment, he could even believe that the trail had lead him astray. Because, looking at that crumbling, old building, he had his doubts about his little friend living in such a place.

He still walked through the door, however, passing through three obvious street walkers as he did. Behind him, the three girls, who had been laughing at a bawdy joke that one of the girls had told, suddenly stopped, looking anxious. When questioned by the other girls, they tried to push the attention off, saying that they were fine.

Inside of the building, Horace was running up the stairs, his feet never connecting with the steps. The more he ran, the more sure he felt that he was going the right way. He kept running until he came to a floor in which the scent stopped, and lead out onto the floor. He followed it, looking for where it lead- until it came to a door a few doors away from the stairs and the elevator. But, when he finally reached the door, he paused.

He had planned this far; find Molly- but what now? He had told Lilith that he planned to haunt Molly- but that wasn't the truth. Haunting an actual living person (and not a house), as he knew it to be, was usually reserved for ghosts who felt very, very strong emotions- either positive or negative- and who wanted to cling to a specific person. And he really believed that he didn't feel emotions that were strong enough to make him want to haunt Molly. Like, say, love...

No.

He didn't know why or how, but he felt much more alive and lucid when he was around Molly- and that was all. He knew that out of the few other ghosts he had come across, he had learned that in love or hate with a living person or otherwise, ghosts don't regain consciousness. They just... don't. Simple as that.

So, love obviously had nothing to do with his decision at all. It was just selfishness, his desire to be a thinking individual.

That was all.

With a heart that felt lighter by what he had just made himself believe, Horace sunk his head through the door, prepared to face anything from that point onward. Hopefully anything.--

When he looked into the apartment, he felt as though he was engulfed in her scent- Molly's scent. It surrounded him, giving him a lulled feeling of comfort and warmth. He breathed it in deep, imagining that if he had a heart, that it'd be beating in overdrive. He opened his eyes and surveyed the room in front of him.

The floor on the ground in front of him was carpeted with a thinning grey carpet. The walls were a light plaster tone, looking as though the layers of paint on the wall were great in number. A tv sat on the ground, its electrical cord strewn out as it reached for the socket directly behind it.

In the middle of the floor laid a love seat. It was the kind of furniture you'd expect to find as the décor in a trailer- and that was being _kind. _Next to the couch, that dog that he had been inhaling all afternoon was looking up at him.

Horace looked at the dog, not knowing what to expect. The dog seemed to be giving him a look that seemed, in a way, to be knowing. It made Horace feel on edge. Then, just as quickly as the dog had looked up at him, he laid his head back down on the ground with a loud _oompf._

Well so much for that worry.

He walked into the room cautiously, not knowing exactly what to expect- or where to start looking for Molly, for that matter. When he looked down on the love seat, however, he found that he didn't have to look far for Molly. Or, at least, a girl that was literally saturated in Molly's scent.

Granted, the only thing Horace had managed to recognize from her walking across the street earlier and near the dog park was her black hair- but looking down at her like how he was then, he had a very, very hard time envisioning the same girl that he had a vague, blurry memory of being the woman passed out on that couch.

The girl he had perhaps one or two snapshots in his head of her for his memory had had long blond hair, a pudgy little form, and a smiling, constantly loving look to her. At least, that was what he could piece out from his few, broken-up memories of her. And the woman lying on the couch, her eyes tightly shut, was not at all like the Molly he could remember.

Just from the angle he was looking down at her, he could see the black splotches under her eyes; the black hair that pooled down her back, and the weariness that seemed to cloak her like a shroud. This... could this be _his _Molly?

He concentrated on the smell he had memorized on that letter and on the smell this woman produced. The woman lying on the couch and the child he had once known, it appeared, however, were one in the same.

It seemed as though his search was over. And now...

And now...

And now...

He walked over to where Molly's feet were, and sat down over them, his butt going through her legs- which, unlike his ass, were very much real. He stared forward at the wall for a long moment, wanting an epiphany of some sort to happen right then and there- because unless some divine knowledge as to what he was supposed to do now popped into his head, he believed himself to be lost.

He forced himself to stare at the wall in front of him, kind of how he used to force himself to concentrate when he used to climb into his convertible when he had a problem. He figured that he would have to think of something eventually if he just concentrated hard enough...

Eventually, however, he felt his gaze tilt over to the girl lying sprawled out on her side. As much as he would've hated to admit it, the whole time he had spent trying to "concentrate" was wasted time in which he was trying to not look over at her. From the angle he was looking at her from, he was able to see most of her face. He stared at her face for a long, long moment in disbelief. _What... what the fuck has she done to herself?_

She looked dead- no, not dead, but certainly weak. Very, very weak. Like... well, he hated to think of it, but like him. Lost.

He stared at her for a few more seconds, then he felt as though he couldn't do it anymore, and he started to walk around the apartment. He looked in closets- which were full of things like albums with newspaper clippings and worn-looking shoes- in her bedroom, which had an unmade double-bed and a bunch of stacked cardboard boxes with words like, "Romance Books" & "Law Texts" scribbled in sharpie on the sides, in her kitchen, with the yellowed appliances, and he looked in a strange, wide room that was covered from wall-to-wall in bookshelves, and featured a shabby desk and a computer chair in the center. On top of the desk, a computer was turned off, and a huge, old book whose title had been long since rubbed off from age was sitting near the far edge.

When he was done looking around, he went out of the room, going through the door instead of opening it, as he had done with the rest of the doors in the house, not wanting any noise to frighten Molly awake. When he came out of the other side of the door, however, he found that Molly was nowhere to be seen in the room.

He listened carefully for any sounds that might tell him where Molly was as he strided by the sleeping dog on the floor. As he walked past the couch, movement in the direction of the kitchen caught his eye.

Molly was making a slow walk towards him, holding a spoon and a cup of yogurt. She lifted her head, and Horace felt his chest sink inwards. He remembered what had happened earlier- how she couldn't see him- yet he still felt uneasy about her looking at him.

He didn't know whether to feel relieved or disconsolate when Molly glanced up, then looked back down at her package of yogurt. Before she did, however, Horace finally got to look into her eyes. They were dulled blue.

As he looked at those eyes, Horace felt something in him come very close to breaking down. From what he had imagined about Molly, he had expected her to at least look happy- like how he could sort-of/kind-of remember Molly always seeming to be. Now... she just looked miserable.

As she walked towards him, just as she was about to enter into the carpeted area, she suddenly stopped, dropping the spoon she had been holding, and groaned. She looked- and sounded- as though she were in pain. She stood there for a few more moments, then shook her head, wincing, and walked through him, still holding her hand to her head as she did. Horace watched as she entered the bathroom, the turned back to the kitchen. To his disbelief, there were things lying all over the floor in the kitchen. The spoon she had dropped, a pair of shoes, and some socks laid on the ground haphazardly. Horace looked at the things on the ground, suddenly wondering if she could even take care of herself at all lately, the way she was acting.--

Molly stared at the wet spoon for what felt like a long, long time before she lifted her head up and slowly, achingly, maddeningly slowly, turned around. She expected someone to come charging at her at any moment.

She backed up until she was pressed against the counter, her eyes wide, her breathing erratic. When nothing happened, she eventually calmed down and began to walk- tip-toe would be more appropriate- out of the kitchen. Nothing got her.

She took a deep, satisfying breath. _Alright._ She decided._ I'm just going crazy- not as bad as having someone- a _dead _someone- after me. Or whatever it is he might have wanted..._ unfortunately, there came a realization after she thought those words that had her, if it were possible, feeling worse.

_If I just imagined that it wasn't me who had put my shoes and socks away, and rinsed off the spoon... maybe I'm going... crazy._

With that worrying thought in mind, Molly sighed heavily, and walked into the study, shutting the door behind her, not wanting, for some odd reason, for Behemoth to see her as low as she felt.

She walked-staggered- over to the desk, and pushed the keyboard out of her way. Her trembling hands reached over to the old law text she had been looking over half-heartedly for the past three days. She sook the solace that reading boring law texts brought her, needing it desperately.

She flipped it open to a random page. Luckily for her, it was a list of amendments to the constitution. She read over this, looking at those words, but really thinking about what was happening to her.

_Congress shall make no law- _Well, this was bound to happen; after all, the man I've idolized all of these years was loony tunes- _respecting an establishment of religion,-_ But, it wasn't his fault he turned out the way he did- that's why I love... no, no, loved, loved!...Him- _or preventing the free exercise thereof..._.

She continued thinking and thinking and thinking some more until a teardrop, unnoticed by her, slipped down her cheek, just missing the old book to splatter on the edge of the desk. She stared at that wet spot on the desk, and rubbed her fingers against the wet spot with a slow reverence. Then, without even realizing it, she began to sob.

I was so unexpected, the feelings, the dark, dark feelings that suddenly ran her over, leaving her helpless and weeping. She lowered her face into her hands and began to sob hysterically. In between crying, she spoke to herself, sobbing.

"Oh god... I'm going crazy... what the hell's wrong with me?! Oh god, I can't...I...I can't do this anymore!"--

Horace had followed her stiff-legged walk into the study, and as he had watched her read the book intently, he was thinking the same thing she was, pretty much. What in the hell's wrong with me? And while she cried, he kept reaching out to her, his hand going through her shaking shoulder. He had tried as hard as he could to concentrate, to make it so that his hand could become a part of the material world, but he couldn't, for the life of him, make himself concentrate with the sound of her crying so close to him.


	10. Strange Bedfellows

**Chapter 10- Strange Bedfellows Revised**

**Author's Note:** I'm not going to front any of you and act like I haven't updated in forever. I do hope, however, someone is still reading this, despite my own issues (senior project, family, getting ready to go to college...) and me dragging my heels.

Well, I hope this chapter is sufficient; that's all I can really hope for. Oh, also, here's where a warning for Sexual Content is gonna go. It's slight, but if you're touchy about that (Really? A homeless man gets his head split like an overripe melon, not a peep, and sexual content, then OHMIGAWD!- Really?) then you've been warned. I need to move onto another one of my other ABANDONED fanfics now to add onto, while the momentum's strong. Gah.

-- **Mad Red Queen**

* * *

Molly continued to cry against the book for quite awhile. Horace didn't like it- sure- but it gave him time to retract himself into a deep recess in his mind, a place where he was looking over the things that had lately been presented to him in that splintered, broken way of his. His concentration was already barely hanging on the doorway of usable by rusted hinges, but the sound of Molly sobbing away into her book broke his concentration many a time whenever her cries grew in intensity.

In truth, Horace really wanted to stop pondering things and to be able to reach forward and wrap his long, powerful arms around Molly's slight, shuddering shoulders. Sometimes, out of desperation when her cries got to him once or twice, he really did try. Each time he did, however, the same result occurred- he ended up going through her as though he were a fog that could never touch her. If not for the fact that Horace felt what little working emotions he had in him drained out in the tears that had come out of him earlier, he might have had the energy to really worry over what it was that was stopping him from the psychical contact he suddenly wanted with Molly.

But for that moment, all he thought about was trying to block out her weeping without having to resort to leaving her side. The best thing he could do was to try to think about everything that had happened to him for maybe the first time since he had left the junkyard both empty-hearted and, unbelievably, hopeful.

At some point, Molly just went quiet. For a moment, even as drained and emotionless as he had become, he was nearly thrown into a panic at the thought that she wasn't breathing. When she finally lifted her head about five minutes later, sniffling like a kid whose ice cream cone had gotten dropped on the ground, Horace could have just died- again- in relief.

The rest of the day, Molly did not show any other real sign of grief or any other real emotional disturbance. It was almost eerie; she walked to one room, turned or pushed on one device or another, did this or that, then went right onto the next task with no mannerisms that would have comforted Horace. To Horace, about everything (short of petting Behemoth when she sat stock still on the couch with commercials running by on the tv) was robotic. He did not like how drastic the change was from Molly Weeping and Molly Robotic.

When the sun set, Horace resigned himself to sitting on Molly's bed and watching as she came into the bedroom. She had gone into the bathroom earlier to take a bath, and he had assumed that she had taken clothes with her. He hadn't really been paying attention to anything she had done before leaving the bedroom earlier, truthfully, because he had been looking out the window next to her full-length mirror. The sun had begun to set, and he had found it more interesting than watching her move around the bedroom, picking up clothes off of the floor scattered around the bed before walking into the bathroom. After she came back, Horace looked up from the wood floor's many shiny, driven-in nails, and was greeted by the sight of Molly wearing nothing but a worn Disney towel wrapped over her hair.

It was shock that came first, of course, then a curiously hypnotized feeling as he stared at her when she walked into the room. He couldn't take his eyes off of the now not-so-little Molly Christoe.

She never seemed to notice him as she walked over to the mirror that sat next to her set of wooden drawers. She halted in front of the mirror, pausing to look at a side-view of her body. She frowned.

Horace realized that it wasn't that he was actually hypnotized by the sight of Molly, but it was, indeed, a sight he couldn't talk himself out of viewing. It could have been a more innocent sight (but a none the less magnificent one) with the level of indecent feelings that he was experiencing. It could have been some ancient, grand vase he was inspecting from the foot of the bed with how lustful he felt at the moment. He felt... nothing.

It was not he first time he had set about to stare at the sight he had never been willingly shown in both life and death. In fact, even on his way into the city, he had accidentally passed through more than one sight close to the one he was being treated to. Women undressing- both without any thought that anyone was actually watching them, and women who stripped in front of their lovers. He had walked through many a couple in their own particular moments of higher emotion- and one moment in which it was obvious that one of the two he caught in the moment was not in the same state of high emotion. And, yes, ability to feel sexual desire or not, he had stayed and watched as people did things that only he could have fantasied about and envied over as a teen boy, daydreaming when he took a drive in his tow and watched couples holding hands through town, then lying half-nude in his cot at night, enjoying that empty, desperate creature comfort that never substituted for anything more than that one moment of ecstasy- then loneliness. Those long, almost hopelessly empty nights were almost always ended- or began when things were at their most depressing and lonely- with those prolonged moments of almost cruel hope and completely over-powering sexual energy, then of the hurried flight to the sun, only to get sent back to earth in flames and through a cloud of smoke. In a way, being unable to feel lust in any way he could once feel was a wonder in its own.

He had never really been able to appreciate either the power he could wield over his own now non-existent sexual desire, or the pure, unclouded beauty of a naked female. Staring at Molly, he flowed his line of vision over the bony cones of her ankles, the sweet, slight curves of her legs as they swept up to her round plates of knees, the way her thighs curved up like a following a vase from its foot upwards. As he stared at her, she suddenly turned so that she was facing away from the mirror- but now facing him almost directly as she examined her backside with a blank expression.

He stared at the wheat-colored area between her legs, that area where she obviously hadn't taken the time to change her natural color of her blonde hair. As he stared at that soft yellow downward pointing arrow of hair, he began to feel less comfortable with staring at that part of her body than her legs. He eventually glanced away, feeling as though he really was the voyeur that he probably was. And not only that, but the girl he was staring at was _Molly Christoe. Little _Molly.

He stared off to the side for a moment, eyes shut, then, feeling more than just a little uncomfortable, he turned back to stare back at her, his eyes spanning the fullness of her wide, sticking-out hips like his hands, in his mind just barely touching the flesh, feeling awkward even imagining touching her. He came up past the indent of her belly button and ran the much-more gentle and much, much less calloused and awkward weight of his imagined hands against the pale skin covering the lower part of her chest, imagining what each bump of her rib bones through her flesh felt like under his finger tips. When he reached the curved hills of her breasts, he halted. For the second time, he felt like nothing more than some disgusting pervert, staring at a girl who, to him, would probably never really be anything more than a girl- even though he knew that she was probably older than he had been before he died.

While he hesitated for a moment longer before turning back to look at her again finally, he heard her making sounds of dismay- or disgust. When he looked back at her, he saw her staring with disliking eyes at herself in the mirror, her hands positioned over her belly. She sighed deeply, and let out a sound of dismay. "Ughh."

To his surprise, she suddenly turned away from the mirror and looked _right at him on the bed. _Smirking darkly, she said, "So, what do you think?"

For a moment, the shock he felt was almost too immense and heavy to lift as he thought, horrified, about what he was planning to say to Molly with his hands caught in the proverbial cookie jar. Then, Molly walked over to the bed, her movements exaggerated so that her hips jerked back and forth in a mockery of a sexy strut- and went to the other edge at the end of the bed, to where Behemoth, forgotten by Horace, laid there with that perpetual look of misery on his aging, furred face.

She cupped the dog's muzzle and ran her long fingers down the shape of the dog's skull. She sat so that she was sitting with her legs hanging off of the edge of the bed, seeming content to pet the half-asleep animal next to her, unaware that a creature that was, perhaps, worse than a beast was watching her, unseen.

A short while later, she turned away from the dog to stare out the window Horace had been looking through earlier, transfixed by the nightly light show of the sun outside. As he looked at her form sitting on the other side of the bed, he found that sexual desire or not, it was impossible to not feel a pang somewhere in him when he saw her positioned like that. As well as admiring her body further, he also stared at her, not able to fully lose the fear that she could, somehow, see him.--

At some point after Molly had shut the light off in her room and had lied down in her bed, her blankets covering her up totally where her tank top and panties that she had worn to bed had not, Horace was treated to a moment of clarity that was both a welcome relief while still in the middle of his always-present confusion as well as a conclusion that he was absolutely shocked to discover.

It began with a question that had begun when Molly had finally changed from wearing only her pale skin and went into her sleeping wear earlier that night. It had been one that had afflicted his mind in every way which was possible for a dead man while Molly, unaware of anything out of the ordinary in her own apartment, trolled her way back into her study to glower at her books until bed time. The question that got to Horace was, _why do I feel the way I do around her- naked or dressed? _

When he was alive, he might have found it more convenient to just push those feelings away, believing that no woman would want him anyway, but the many realities he found himself forced to face made him realize that he was going to have to deal with this.

For one, even though he could feel nothing, when he saw her crying in the study earlier, he could not make himself function in any way he had become so used to while she had been upset. Another was that although he had been tempted, he found that he hadn't bludgeoned anyone to death since he had found Molly's letter- and her trail. Last but not least was his curious reaction to her when she had walked into her bedroom earlier, that feeling in his chest that reminded him vaguely that was as though something soft was rubbing along in his chest and stomach, giving him a pleasant friction in his insides. He had no choice other than to think about the situation he was in, and about whatever he had been planning unconsciously since he had found her poem.

He danced around the issue until the digital clock that sat on top of Molly's nightstand, partially balanced on a book whose spine read, "1st Degree Murder... What It Means To You." read 3:20. He knew that it was that time in particular, because he had been staring first at the pale skin of Molly's arm, which was thrust out of her blankets to lay against her hip. The darkness in the room was so absolute that the normally dull light of the digital alarm clock was bright enough to give Molly's pearlescent skin a pink-red tint.

Feeling uncomfortable with staring at Molly in a way that he was shocked to realize as hungry in some inexplicable way, he forced his gaze up to the digital clock, watching as the minutes flicked by.

The unpleasant explanation came within minutes- or, more appropriately, clawed its way up and out of the junk pile of flimsy explanations that Horace had hidden it under back when he had found Molly's poem. Horace had tried to forget that explanation in an effort to ignore that most realistic of answers. Ignoring it, however, was much like ignoring a blow horn being turned on next to his ear on full-blast.

And so, without really getting over the shock that came along with his words, Horace said it for the first time in his entire life. And death.

"I...I... love her?"

He turned to look over at the dog (who he was lying partially through on the bed) for assurance either way. The dog made a soft snuffling, half-asleep dog noise, and turned away with a noise that was unmistakably, a fart. Horace groaned, sinking back into the bed.

As he allowed himself to feel comfort in the almost euphoric way it felt to him to have the weight of his conscious finally lifted with the words he had needed to have spoken, he was jolted to attention with the shrill noise in the room.

He felt as though the noise had hit him like a jolt to the chest, but, when he realized that the noise was really Molly's cell phone, which was on and giving out loud, birring rings, he calmed himself down. There was, after all, nothing abnormal about Molly's phone going off- even at this late an hour. She was, after all, a lawyer.

It seemed a lot less normal, however, when the rings of the phone seemed to grow louder, causing him to wince slightly. When he looked over in the direction of Molly- wondering why she wasn't awake- he was surprised to see that Molly did not seem disturbed by the sound of the phone ringing. In fact, she seemed to be in a deep, uneventful rest.

Horace stared at her in disbelief, thinking, _Why can't she seem to hear that cell phone? _to himself. Eventually, the shrill noise of the cell phone seemed to warp into a horrible, pulsating roar that made Horace have to choose between either clutching pillows over his head or going over to the cell phone and hope that finally confessing his feeling to himself gave him the ability to manipulate real world objects and living things once again.

He gave into the need to do the former with a loud grunt as he trudged past the foot of Molly's rumpled bed and up to the nightstand next to her side of the bed.

On the nightstand were three objects; a warm cup of soda that she hadn't pulled out of the refrigerator that day, the alarm clock that sat on top of the old book, and her loud, evil-sounding cell phone. Despite the fact that Horace could barely stand another moment of listening to the phone's noise, Horace hesitated, his huge, powerful hand halfway reaching down to the nightstand. When the cell phone rang once again, however- the loudest ring in the whole time that it had been going off- he grabbed the phone and pulled it off of the nightstand, taking a moment to nearly rip the top folded half off as he pulled the phone's brightly lit lid back, causing the phone to cease ringing in the beginning of another ring.

As he pulled the phone up to his ear, he realized that he was surprised about what was going on. He hadn't thought past the slight chance that he could actually answer the phone to make it stop ringing.

Not knowing what else to do as he raised the phone to his ear slowly, Horace looked around the room for a second nervously before he asked, "Hello?"


	11. Bad Recollections

**Chapter 11- Bad Recollection(s) Revised**

**Author's Note:** I've strayed a bit too far from updating like I should- but at least this should prove that I'm not giving up. At least.

This one's one of the longer chapters I've written- and I just hope that everybody who reads it finds this chapter not, er, nonsensical. I found the length of this chapter necessary- in fact, I've had to cut the end off considerably from the original version- but what I think about doesn't matter in the long run, now, does it? Just tell me straight whether you found this chapter good (and necessary).

Oh, the warning... In this chapter, I'm going to have to forewarn about Offensive & Derogatory Language. If that stuff offends you to an ungodly amount, and you won't be able to stop yourself from going off about it, just skip around that part, or just stop.

--_Mad Red Queen_

* * *

Horace didn't know if he really did hear what he thought he did on the other end of the phone, or if he had just simply imagined it.

Either way, he believed that he heard a noise very much close to the sound of a gate, heavily rusted, creaking. The sound brought him back immediately to the Mahoney Family Junkyard, to the sound of everything in the old, cold place where he spent his entire life- the crash of cars being crushed far in the depths of the dilapidated metal jungle, the sounds of people driving past his small one-room shack at the road's strict speed of 45, and of his dogs barking from their kennel.

He shut his eyes, and when he opened them, he found himself standing in complete darkness, the only noise he could hear being the so very familiar sound of the rusted metal squeaking in the darkness. He knew it was complete darkness, because he looked around, turned around in a complete spin, and his eyes only returned with the confirmation that he was in a sea of unwavering black.

"It's just lovely to see you again, big boy." A soft voice said from the darkness.

Horace could have jumped backwards and started yelling- especially when the darkness around him was dissolved with the bright light that came to life in the dark room he was previously standing in- and steeled himself, prepared to face whatever was in the dark.

His eyes were searching the now bright room, looking for the owner of the voice. His gaze found the form of a women wearing torn-looking rags who looked as though she had just gone through a mud treatment- minus the treatment- and any part of exposed skin appeared to be a cadaverous shade of gray. And, he realized as he raised his eyes to search her face, her eyes seemed to have become an intricate cobweb of blood red, lending her the look of someone severely hung over or terribly sick. All in all, they reminded him of his own- only the color of their irises differing.

Horace must have been staring at her silently for too long, because she gave him a catty grin and posed sideways, turning her waist at a delicate angle. The smile was not very comforting (or pleasant) because of her teeth, which were either missing, or hung in her mouth by reddened, practically tenderized tissue.

"Ah- I take it you approve of my costume?" She asked in a surprisingly warm voice that Horace had no problem with placing, finally, as Lilith's.

She turned on her bare, dirty feet, whirling around in the same manner a young girl would the first time she wore a flower girl's puffy dress. Without really thinking, Horace said, "What are you wearing?"

For a moment, Lilith's dirt-crusted, peasant-like features wrinkled into a look of pure distaste. Then, barely looking as though she had ever worn a look of displeasure in her entire existence, her smile came back. "Oh... I love the middle ages- and the Black Plague; now those were some good times!"

Horace felt like asking her how long she's lived... or, more or less, existed, but he remembered that there were things of more importance than finding out how long a creature like Lilith had existed. He became aware, once again, of the white, featureless room he was standing in when his eyes trailed away from Lilith's peasant rag dress.

"Okay, I'm here... what now?"

Lilith, who had started twirling once again while Horace was talking, stopped suddenly, her smile seeming to freeze itself on her dirty face. When she finally sighed and turned back to face Horace, her mood seemed to have dampened considerably. "You must have really meant it if you brought yourself here with the intensity of your..." She paused, looking away from him and taking a moment to swallow a lump that materialized in her throat. "Like all things in the afterlife that are this... out of the ordinary," Horace found himself thinking, '_and this is _supposed_ to be ordinary?' "_you will have to sign a quick contract, then you can begin what the living would call some exterminations of the highest order."

"You mean getting rid of- er, destroying them..."

"Sending them to the afterlife permanently, so they can face judgment, yes."

"Okay, giving them a way over here so God can..."

"Oh, He doesn't handle personal cases anymore; he has either us lost souls on probation to judge with the All-Seeing Gaze, or those hypocritical angels to do the job."

Horace stared at her for a moment, looking very annoyed before sighing in defeat, understanding that anything he said to her dealing with the afterlife would be promptly proven wrong by a flesh and blood (is it possible that she has any sort of feelable skin?) native of the afterlife. "...I'm going to have to sign something before I start?"

She frowned and tilted her head slightly. "Basically, yeah. Something else, but that comes later. Besides, it's not that... important."

Horace wasn't surprised by how doubtful he felt that anything having to do with Lilith, or the afterlife, for that matter, was ever unimportant or simple.

He stared at her for a moment, focusing on the slightly down-turned curve of her lips, blinked- and found her gone from the spot that she had been in a second before. And, along with her disappearing, what appeared to be a huge, dark-wooded desk (the kind his father- and, he had always believed, every principle in the schools that he had never been allowed to attend for long- had in his office) had materialized five feet or so before him. He felt a sense of de ja vu, and why shouldn't he, after all, with the way it was turned so that he was facing the desk in the same way he always had?

Without meaning to, his mind dredged up memories, ones he had believed to have been long buried in the black, barely disconcernable waters of his past memories, bobbing up like amphibian, and sometimes rather nightmarish creatures, gasping at him. He saw images of a stern man wearing a cheap stone-colored suit and wrinkled yellow tie, tucking his dress shirt into the pants of his Dockers, asking him without ever actually turning to see him to ask him if he looked good enough to get the dick for brains that owned the local used car lot to bend over the desk and let him (he meant it jokingly, of course, as homophobic as he actually was all the while that Horace knew him) fuck him up the ass as hard as he could, and be grinning afterwards.

The another, this one of a his old middle school principle telling the same man who had worn the cheap suit, and who was wearing an oil-stained blue mechanic's jumper that he was concerned with his son's school attendance, which was more of a complete lack thereof, and despite the fact that he was quickly growing past his father's height and was easily two inches taller than the concerned (yet frightened of him- they were always _frightened, _in some elemental part of themselves, whether they meant to or not) head principle. His father's face had bloomed a bloody, purplish color that Horace was more than familiar with, which always served as more than decent a warning that, fact aside that he couldn't do anything in the mode of physical harm to Horace, he was pissed, and it was time for Horace the Horse to do the 'ol heave ho away.

"Are you telling me what right I have and don't have with my son?" Horace couldn't see his father's expression- his head was bowed down in an attempt to shut out the voices in the room.

"No, Mr. Mahoney, but-"

"But what? But what? Are you offerin' to adopt him? If so, please make me a fair offer!" Horace winced as his father began banging on the back of his chair, which he had abandoned to stand behind. "Do I hear fifty? Do I hear fifty-five-?"

"Mr. Mahoney, please!" The principle implored. He, of course, had never seen Joseph Mahoney swept up in his own version of a real fire and brimstone sermon, so he was most likely shocked. "This is about your son who-"

"Do I hear forty?" Joseph bellowed. "Do I hear forty for my god-_damn _retard of a son? No? Then Thirty?!"

Horace believed that this would be when he should start crying, bawling, and go racing out of the room like any other normal kid, but he only stayed silent, staring at the floor like the 'tard he was, after all. It would only enrage dad, and his father was all Horace had, besides the dogs and the yard. The damned junk yard.

"Mr. Mahoney," the principle finally said, giving up on keeping the conversation with the wild, aging owner of the Mahoney Family Junkyard, yelling. "Mrs. Dohert, the counselor for sixth graders, says that she has real reason to be concerned with your son's behavior towards other people-"

"Holy hell, folks," Joseph said, smacking at the wood of the chair in front of him with his palm. "You've gotta give a father a break- after all, this make and model may be downright fuckin' ugly, but it can haul like you WOULDN'T BELIEVE!"

"MR. MAHONEY, WE HAVE FOUND ABNORMAL BRUISING AND MARKS ON YOUR SON'S BODY!" the principle finally shouted. He then paused, as though embarrassed. He also, no doubt, expected another outburst from this, the great king of all dysfunctional and bad parents.

None came.

After a moment of silence, his father spoke in a much softer tone of voice. "...And what's that supposed to mean to me?"

In that moment, the shock coming from the principle seemed to be a physical thing, causing the air in the tiny head administrator's office to vibrate. Finally, then, he spoke. "I've seen parents like you before, Joseph Mahoney- but none who have ever been so boldly callous and harmful to such a talented, artistic child like your son."

His father scoffed and walked out from behind the empty seat, coming up to the principle's desk. When he spoke, every word he said coated in cruelty. "Horace? You must have the wrong parent and child in here- y 'see, this idjit here..." he flung his arm out behind him, motioning to Horace, who still sat there, his head turned downward. "Couldn' live alone by hisself properly, let alone be a goddamn Mark van Gout."

As Horace sat, trying to look as small as a tall boy like himself could and attempt to ignore what the two men were saying in front of him, he felt sucked out of being able to ignore what his father and the principle were saying by hearing his father mispronouncing the name of one of Horace's favorite artists. _It's __**Vincent **__van __**Gough, **__you moron! _Horace wanted to yell at his father. _And you don't know anything about what I can do- just like everybody else. _

His hands tightened on the smooth wood of the chair's armrest for a moment before he let up, remembering that if he could tighten his grip hard enough, he could easily crunch the wooden armrest into splinters and sawdust, so he turned to tightening his teeth into a painful pressure point in his teeth and jaws instead of gripping the (to him) easily crush able wood.

"Mr. Mahoney, do you even know what your son does in his art classes- and out of class?" The principle finally said.

With that one sentence, Horace felt his head snap up so that his gaze no longer napped on his lap like a cat and was, instead, focused on the back of his father's cleaned mechanic's uniform. Dear god, no, how could he tell his father...

"What in the hell are you gettin' at?" His father said. Even from a view of his back instead of his face, Horace could practically see the anger coming off of his father in waves.

"Your son is one of the most accomplished young painters I've ever seen. He is what many specialists would call a... a prodigy- a genius at paints..." The squat superintendent then started looking for something under his desk hurriedly, abandoning Horace's raging dragon of a father for the moment.

"Look here," Joseph said. He sounded half angry and half uncomfortable with the situation. "I don't know who in the hell lead you to believe that Horace could hold a damn pencil right to squiggle a stick figure, let alone paint, but whoever it was really lead you along, Mr.-"

The principle seemed to have found what he was looking for- a large, thick piece of white paper rolled up into a tube- and he placed it on his desk, cutting Joseph off. Before he could even begin to unroll the painting, Horace already knew what it was. He stared at it in disbelief and horror.

How in the hell had anybody found that, since he had given it to his art teacher, Miss Simmins, for safekeeping?

He had warned her that his father had already torn up the sketchbook that he had failed to keep hidden from him, and had told him afterward that drawing in sketchbooks- and painting- was something that faggots did (he kept the "faggot" part out when telling the whole sob story to Mrs. Simmins, for reasons of embarrassment). And he could only hope that the principle was bluffing, and what he was unfurling wasn't Horace's most prized painting, or that they had broken into his locker and had taken one of his nonetheless prized works, but one that was less important to Horace than the one he had entrusted to the art teacher.

But, as the man behind the desk unfurled the huge, thick piece of paper, Horace felt his breath stick in his throat at the unmistakable sight of his favorite creation with paint.

How could he not identify it immediately?

The painting was comprised of a fiery red corvette sitting atop a huge pile of crushed, rusted cars. The sun was shining on it like a most perfect spotlight- as though the corvette itself was the star of some show for the heavens, or a king whose throne was that of the dead bodies of other mechanical beings who were never destined to out-race the great red contraption atop the pile made up of them.

Sure, the art teacher had said it was a miraculous painting for a pre-teen like him, but Horace was never completely satisfied with the painting. In short, he had been planning to wait until he got better at painting before he tried re-doing it.

It would be the last time he would ever see it again as a whole, bright painting.

His dad stared down at it for a moment, probably either shocked, or busy trying to guess at what the little smirking man behind the desk was trying to get at. His father wasn't too hard a nut to crack; after all, he was always, self-admittedly, looking for the angles other people were trying to pull on him.

Then, turning around slowly, he spoke in a tone of voice that showed his surprise. "Did you do this, son?"

Horace didn't say anything for a moment, but when he regained control of himself, he shook his head vigorously before turning his gaze back to his painting. His eyes stuck to the mesh of blue sky and white, cream-puff clouds that made up the sky in his painting, focusing on that instead of his father.

His father turned back around, seemingly satisfied with his answer. "There, see? Boy says he didn't do it, and you can hold me on this one, Ira," He ignored the annoyed look on the other man's face, which was probably on account of him referring to the man by his first name instead of his title. "This idjit couldn't do this anymore than I could river dance."

The principle rose out of his seat and pulled the paper over slightly by one of it's curled ends, flipping it partially over. "I disagree., Mr. Mahoney. Do you recognize this?"

Horace could almost believe that he felt his eyeballs close to popping out of his skull when he saw that scribble of pencil written on the back of the painting. Even though he couldn't read it from where he was sitting, he knew, with a dropping heart, that it was his signature.

Sadly, his father memorized almost any and every signature of everyone who had ever signed anything and had passed it even close to him. And, Horace knew, he had easily memorized Horace's scrawled, wide-spaced writing a long time ago.

At first, his father didn't speak. Then, he reached down to the painting, caressing the drop of golden paint that illuminated the car from above. "Horace? Did you lie to me?" Horace didn't answer. "Horace? Son? You want to explain something to me?"

Horace felt more panic than he ever had in his entire life- even when he had gotten beaten up by a group of freshmen in high school when he was eight years old. But, then again, Horace cared more for that painting than he did for his worthless, hatefully shaped body. He tried to swallow some of that panic away, then said, "That... that's mine... I just... I just didn't recognize it-"

"Do I look like a sommabitch that's as stupid as you?!" He snarled, bringing his tightened fist down on the painting. "You were planning on lyin' to me!"

Then, just as quickly as he started to yell, Joseph was silent. And, for a moment, Horace could almost believe that his father had, miraculously, calmed down, and seemed preoccupied with running his fingertips all over the painting, running over the painted lines that Horace had worked on while sitting in his corner of the art room, alone as always.

Then, he grabbed onto the bottom end of the painting and whipped around, holding it out as though he was holding the carcass of a smashed rat he had found in the fridge. "Where in the hell d 'ya think you can get with this, huh?" Horace didn't answer, so Joseph took a step closer to his son and thrust the painting out at the sitting, gangly boy. "Answer me, you stupid sonofabitch! Answer me!"

Tears were building up, and he could not hold them back any longer. "It makes me happy!" He yelled, trying to stop himself from sobbing. After he finished saying it, he choked back a powerful sob, his lips moving on their own accord as though each halve was a rabbit's nose.

His father seemed to be looking down at him for forever, waiting for him to regain control of himself, then he bent over closer to Horace's face. "You are no fuckin' fruit. I may raise a goddamn 'tard, but I refuse to raise a faggot- got me?" He then dropped the poster to the ground and reached forward in one quick, cruel movement, latching his bony, hard right hand on his son's lumped chin. "You are no faggot."

Not knowing what to do, Horace could only nod his head dully and dread anything his father planned to do next. He could not control the flow of tears any longer, however; they flowed from his eyes like a fountain, running over the flat expanses of his cheeks, darkening his ratty t-shirt's collar.

His father let go of his chin just as quickly as he had grabbed on, and Horace believed, for only a second, that he had gotten a momentary respite, at least a moment in which he wasn't being terrorized by his father. Then he saw Joseph picking up his painting again, this time taking two ends of the painting in either hand- and ripping it in half.

For a moment, Horace could believe that someone had just dropped a cinder block in his chest- or that he wasn't really seeing what he was seeing. But when he shut his eyes, then opened them again, he was really seeing his father tearing his painting up.

A choked cry rose out of his throat as he raced to his feet, running to his father's side, trying to save the shredded mess that had been his painting in blind desperation. "Dad, no!" He cried, trying to force Joseph's hands off of what was left of the painting.

"Stop it, stop it!" The principle shouted from behind his desk. His voice was overpowered by the sound of Horace and his father as the painting was ripped up, despite Horace's attempts to save the painting, which was worsened by the fact that he was not really trying to harm or touch his father out of a desire to try to obey what his father had ordered him to do. His father eventually rose to his feet when all that was left was pieces no bigger than quarters, leaving Horace on the ground to stare down at the mess of what had once been thick paper in shock and grief.

"I told you not to do it, so that's what you get." He said down at his son, his voice oddly cheery-sounding, any earlier rage gone. Horace was too shocked for a moment to respond, then he lowered himself down until he was sitting with his face turned down, his arms entwined together, making him look like a man in the depths of an agony. He began to cry in low, shuddery sobs, his chest wracking from each pained shudder.

"Sir," the principle said, sounding every bit once more like a true school administrator. "along with physical abuse and obvious neglect, this outburst is going to be known by the right authorities so that when your time come to plead your case to keep Horace, you won't have a chance to be able to do this to him agai-"

"Oh, blow it out your self-righteous ass," Joseph interrupted. "because you won't be able to do shit. I don't mean to get into some old-fashioned pissin' contest with you, but I know I've got a helluva lot more money to spend on any court bullshit that you and this school wants to get that I do involved in over my boy."

"I believe that you'll find that money doesn't pay for anything when it comes to a criminal offense done to one of this school's children!" The principle said, his voice sounding more as though it was coming from a lawyer than a small-town principle. Much less one that looked more likely to break into a full-body tremble and begin to piss his pants than start yelling at the town loony for the way he chooses to treat his freak of a son. "And it disturbs me to see the way that you would treat your son, especially since he is really not what you say he is."

Joseph's voice seemed to be a sharp, cold edge on Horace' ears. "Are you all done actin' all self-important n' shit? Good. Here's the truth that you seem to forget all the while I'm down here, wavin' my dick 'round in the wind. First of all, he's _my _boy, whether I like it or not, and I know what's best for him. Now, you may or may not disagree with my ways of keeping my freak-boy in line, but trust me, once he's pulled out of this school for good, you won't need to think about him anymore, alright? Another thing's that all the while you goddamn idjits here are all tying yourselves up because of Horace, he's out there, getting into fights with the other kids, bein' told that he's a worthless sommabitch. Now, while you idjits are all havin' yourselves a reg'lar jerk-off fest, tryin' to see who'll bust 'fore the other one does, I'm putting a fuckin' roof over my worthless son's head and givin' him something he can really do when he gets older-" he bent down, picking up a shredded piece of paper, one of the many that had come from the painting. "-An' not tellin' him somethin' he can't be. " Joseph seemed finished with what he had said, dropping the remnant of the painting onto the ground, but when the principle looked ready to speak again, he spoke again, his voice was unwavering. "Unless you want to start somethin' that'll cost not just this fuckin' school but you a shitload of money- and one helluva lot o' trouble- more than you could think of- I'd leave it alone." He stomped away from the principle, walking past Horace towards the entrance to the principle's office.

He was a few steps away from the open doorway when he stopped at the sound of Horace sniffling softly. "And since you want to act like a goddamn pussy, you can walk home. Be there before noon, or I'll go lookin' for ya, and you'll have to work 'till seven tomorrow."

Horace didn't turn around, but he heard the sound of his father's hard-soled work boots hitting the linoleum out in the hall, and he knew that his father had left.--

He was shaken out of the vision he barely recognized as a memory of his from long, long ago by the sound of wood scraping. When he look at the source of the sound, it came from behind the great, dark desk.

He was still thinking about what he had just seen, that dark snippet of a miserable life that he felt less than acquainted with when he came up to the desk, curiosity winning over anything else.

He looked over the desk in time to watch as a hand- small, filthy- slammed a manila folder down on top of the desk. When Horace looked down over the folder and at the head of he owner of the small hand, he saw that it was Lilith who was crouched behind the desk, looking through the vast-sized desk's many drawers. She was apparently having problems finding something within the huge mess of drawers that made up her side of the desk.

As she continued looking, obviously not sensing Horace's presence on the other side of the desk, Horace heard her begin to mutter to herself, the only thing he could understand from her low voice as she continued looking through one drawer, "Fuck if any of those messengers can put it in the right..." and, ten seconds later, "I wish _I_ could be paid to screw off in the message port all day..."

She kept on looking through two more drawers before she threw one open impatiently and stopped in the middle of throwing one piece of paper atop the growing pile of folders and papers on the desk. She paused, drawing it closer to her, giving it a quick read before she snapped the fingers of her extra hand together. "Ah- found it! Knew I'd find it..." she paused. "...Eventually."

She looked up from the document briefly before reaching her empty hand out across the table, grasping Horace's huge hands in hers. "Last chance to change your mind, y'know."

Horace contemplated the many differences that came with the situation he was in; his hand was a giant compared to the smaller one that rested on his, yet the one with the most power seemed the much smaller of both of them. He also took brief note of how kind- how intimate, really- it was for her to put her hand atop his. "I... guess it is." Horace said , staring at the paper Lilith held. "...Can we just do whatever needs to be done?"

Lilith gave him a small twist of her lips (a bittersweet smile for sure, just more bitter than sweet) before turning the paper around and sliding it over to Horace's side of the desk.


	12. Touch Pain

**Chapter 12- Touch/Pain**

**Author's Note:** Well, how's everybody been?

I bet you all hate me. Oh well. I'm back, so you half-hearted writers out there writing in this fandom better get in gear- and get serious.

Also- this story will be completed, come hell or high water- whether it takes weeks or months.

I'm back- and don't you go forgetting it.

--_Mad Red Queen_

* * *

Horace looked down at the paper and attempted to read the first sentence in the small stack of papers. When he looked down at the top paper, however, he realized that all that was on the paper was his full name in cursive:

_Horace Omar Mahoney_

For a second, he thought Lilith was trying to jerk him around.

Lifting off the first paper, he looked at the second, thinking that it would have legal words or something on it, unlike the first page. It didn't- it was, in fact, completely blank. He tried again, flicking through two more blank pieces of paper before flicking them all aside to scrutinize the last page. It, too, was blank.

"What am I supposed to do?"

Lilith's hand, wrinkly, calloused, and looking as though it really did belong to an old hag rather than her, reached across the desk to gently grasp his hand. She bent his fingers so that the only one extended was his index finger. "Put this finger on your name here." she flicked all of the pages back so that they were as she had handed them to him.

Horace shrugged, and, as soon as the small pressure of Lilith's hand left his, he put the small collection of papers on the top of the desk and pressed his finger to the only thing in print on the whole damn paper.

He had no sooner applied the full pressure of his index finger to the words on the paper than a strange pain overcame his frame, bending him forward on the desk. His eyes squeezed themselves shut, forcing his lips clamped shut to stop himself from screaming. After a moment of imposing his every strength on not crying out, a kind of electric current felt as though it had lit up from the tip of his head and to the soles of his feet. He finally screamed out, wanting to be released from the first pain he had experienced since dying.

His eyes had remained shut the entire ordeal, and every other sensation he may have experienced was licked away by the electricity in his spine. When the pain stopped abruptly, without any warning or aftershocks, he opened his eyes to see the top of the desk beneath him.

In a spasm of pain, he had strewn himself across the desk's top- no impossible feat for him, as tall as he was- and he was lying on top of the stack of papers that gave him more pain that he had believed possible after passing on.

He winced in memory of the electroshock, and pushed himself back to his feet.

Looking down at the papers, he was surprised to find that a strange, membranous thing now covered the top sheet that he had put his finger on. It stayed there for a short while, seeming to quiver, before disappearing into the papers.

Horace stared at it in disbelief. Did that come from _him_?

Still shocked, he turned to look down at his index finger.

It looked perfectly normal for the space of a heartbeat- but as he continued to stare at it, something strange appeared on the tip. It looked like a small black discoloration, like how his hands usually did after working on cars back when he was living.

As he continued to stare at it, however, it seemed to, well, _expand_ on the tip of his finger before sinking back down. The sight was enough to make Horace want to gag. As he continued to look at it, it seemed to linger on his finger before disappearing, much like it had on the papers. Horace was so intent on looking at the now non-existent spot, that he did not feel the pressure of the demon's hand on his lower arm. She shook him slightly, bringing Horace's focus on her.

"You should ready yourself. It's going to come in a moment, and you'll feel better if you're already lying down."

Horace opened his mouth to ask her just what she was talking about- but a feeling, as though a darkness had descended over him, seemed to tug his consciousness away with it. As a last minute reflex, he tried to sink as safely as he could to the ground.

He got as far as his knees- then he saw nothing.

He had blacked out before, but usually when he did, he was always unaware of what was going on around him. He could not open his eyes or move at all, but as he lied as a prisoner in the darkness, he could hear Lilith's voice as it spoke close to his ear.

"It's going to be alright. Just try to calm down."

And then, Horace felt what little tie he had to the world outside of the cocoon of darkness slip out of his reach. He could hear nothing more.


	13. The Boss's Digs

**Chapter 13- The Boss's Digs**

**Author's Note:**While I normally dislike switching POVs like a madwoman, I think it's necessary for this story. I hope you agree with me- and I hope you like Molly as much as Horace. I'll be busy, but I'll also be trying to update this fic, along with my others. I hope you'll enjoy this chapter.

--_Mad Red Queen_

* * *

Surely the brightest light possible was what speared through the darkness behind her eyelids. The darkness turned a tissue-pink as her consciousness slowly, almost regretfully, rose awake. What a way to wake up.

She could barely register that where she was was, in no way, shape, or form, her room. But, as she remembered with a sigh, she was lounged on the couch that belonged to the only person she could ever have trusted to tell what she planned on telling. Just remembering the past week scared her enough to make her feel very much awakened.

She jolted herself up into a sitting position on the expensive couch. Across from her, she saw where the light had come from. She had come in the late afternoon, but now, as she could see through the smallest gap in the curtain across from her, it was sundown. It had been the dying light of day that had beamed on her face, waking her up.

She had been sitting there, waiting for Nick to finish with his last client of the day. He had gone through at least three while she was there, and Molly had been forced to sit out in his lounge-turned waiting room while he did. She had been trying to get a hold of him since the day after she had experienced a strange kind of terror that was either a clue that she was going insane, or...

Frankly, after waiting as long as she had been forced to, she was just sick of waiting for the old man to talk to her. She had also begun to suspect after five minutes of having to wait that he had planned to make her wait to talk with him as long as he a way of punishment. It was a typical of Nick to do similar things to Molly and to other people who he shared his knowledge with in some way after they did things he was angry about in some way. And, he was, most likely, still angry at Molly for her trip back to her hometown. More appropriately, how she had cut off their phone conversation.

So there she had been for the last few hours.

Nick had much of his own library out in the room's collection of shelves- because, after hours, the waiting room did turn into his lounge- so she had spent much of her time reading. Or, at least, reading through the spines of the many books that practically papered the walls around her.

She wasn't unusual, she believed, of other people who got into working in the justice system in that she was more interested in solid facts and statements than fictional stories. However, even she had become sick of entertaining herself with mostly out-dated law texts and the occasional Defending Yourself in Court For Dummies.

It was after the second client had walked into Nick's large, and, to her, shut-off office that she came across the only fictional book in his whole library. It was a book by an author who was notorious for her erotica.

Molly was surprised to find it at first, and she, who had lately grown tired of the romance genre, wanted to shove it right back on the shelf where she had found it. After about ten minutes of staring at the near pearlescent carpeting, however, Molly began reading it. After groaning at the corny descriptions the author used in describing the leading male's erection- throbbing, pulsing, steel wrapped in silk- Molly put it back on the shelf, deciding that she'd rather read something with less of a chance of deteriorating her into a giggling idiot. She began reading, in earnest, a book named "Property Laws- What They Mean To You".

Even though reading the first few chapters of Nick's dirty little paperback had been a painful experience- it had given her a headache- it had given her one of the few blessed reprieves her, by definition, industrious mind, had allowed her all week.

It was at some point when she had started to prop herself up on the arm of the couch, that she began to fade out for a bit. The book she had held in her lap had fallen to the floor as she leaned more on the side.

It was a black-out nap that she took- a total and complete lack of rememborable dreams. While the darkness had most likely been what was behind the disappearance of her earlier headache, it had been the cause of the first few minutes she spent waking up with a groggy, unreal quality to everything.

From where she sat, she spent her first few moments trying to piece together everything going on for her. Well, it had officially been a whole day. That meant that she would return to her apartment to find at least one present left by Beh, staining the carpet. She had come to Nick Calhoun's very much expensive office to talk with him. And, she had spent ages in there, waiting by while Nick probably spent the entire time nursing his ego and keeping his clients there for longer periods than necessary.

She had guessed that the both of them had been in bad relations since she had cut him off that one day, for what couldn't have been too long. In retrospect, Layla recalled that five hours was likely the most amount of time she had probably spent with her phone turned off. Something that rung with unfairness struck her about her situation.

But she didn't have a lot of time for any of his old ways- or his narcissism. She had somebody else's life on the line- eventually- as well as her own. As she knew all too well, it was going to be all too easy to allow her life to get wasted away by focusing on all of these things in her life that were not good things. She needed advice, sure, but maybe even more than that, she was in desperate need of another's body to support her own. And, maybe, a shoulder to cry on.

At some point, however, nothing was worth biding her time for as long as she had. Mental breakdown or no, she would have no excuse if she could not check up on all of those things she had been reminding herself to do for the past month. God, all of the evidence, keeping all of those things in mind she should keep with her as strategies...

Sighing, Molly pushed herself to her feet. She tried to force steel that she did not really possess into her spine. She was going to need it- she was going to tell off the one person she had never believed that she was going to ever have to. Enough was enough.

Molly walked to the opened door that lead to the office. Without realizing it, she had balled up her fists, and she bent her shoulders forward. When she had gotten up from the couch, she hadn't known what to expect when she would push the half-open door open. What she had not expected to find was Nick alone in his large office.

For a room so large, and with the large windows that overlooked the sidewalk below, it felt rather small. It was because of the many large pieces of furniture Nick had in the room. His desk, the three chairs that, despite looking very comfortable, nevertheless looked just as serious as they should have in an office, a light-wooded bookshelf, where Nick kept any books that were only fiction, his own desk chair that more resembled an armchair than one made for an office desk- and a large, over-stuffed couch located next to the door. It was on the couch that Molly found Nick.

Nick, the first one in the world to insist on utmost cleanliness and formality in all of his dealings outside of his office, could almost be mistaken for a man who hadn't bothered to dress for anything more important than a five-minute trip to the grocery store. It didn't faze her; she had long since gotten used to his attitudes towards being one of the best attorneys in their not-to little city, and towards what he felt allowed to do in his home base. He was lying back on the couch, arm thrown behind his head, one of his knobby knees raised up so that he could prop the two covers of a book over it, and a blanked, relaxed expression on his face.

Molly walked further into the room. Moving the door open, she saw Nick's face turn up from his book at the sound of the door creaking. He didn't look in any way fazed by her re-appearance after she had shown up that early afternoon. He looked down after a moment.

"You can come in if you want to."

Molly wanted to. She shut the door behind her and sat on the opposite side of the couch from Nick. As she sat down, she looked over at Nick expectantly as he continued to read his book. Molly continued to look over at Nick, feeling more and more awkward. Finally, Nick sighed and spoke.

"How have you been, Molly?"

A part of her wanted to reach over to pull the book out of Nick's hands, while another part of her wanted to scream at him about how she had been feeling as though she had been going crazy and had not been able to talk to anybody about how she had been feeling. After she took a moment to breathe in deeply, she decided to just push her anger aside so that she could focus on doing what she came to do,.

"Pretty good, I guess. I, uh, read those three things you wanted me to- the thing about how to get interrogations tossed."

Nick's eyes stayed on his book. He turned a page with one of his stubby index fingers, then returned the hand to prop his chin up. "Well, that's good to hear- you're doing your homework."

"Like you always told me to do." Molly's lips twitched in a ghost of a smile. "How were the usual clients?"

Nick snorted. "The one that left last- you were here while he was here?- he'll pleading insanity, most likely."

Molly felt herself shiver at the memory of sitting on the opposite side of the couch from the man. He had spent his time waiting for Nick staring forward. Molly, who had been resting on the couch with her arms crossed, staring up at the ceiling for the most part, found the man a little odd, even without even really seeing his face. She quickly decided to not linger on the thought of the man. And, besides, she had no right to feel frightened around his type. Her own client was no more sane than Charles Manson was ready and able to be a newscaster.

"Mine doesn't seem to be too depressed or scared about the trial."

That was putting it lightly. Jessie Branson had seemed more preoccupied with wanting to return to the day room of the institution where he was being held in to watch the next episode of a cartoon he liked the last time Molly had gone to talk with him. To Molly, he even seemed annoyed at her for interrupting him.

Nick's eyes finally strayed from the pages of his book as he looked up at Molly. He shook his head slightly and looked back down at his book. "You know that the insane don't function in the same way you or I do."

In Molly's mind, she saw the flash of a young man's face. He had been grinning at her- more so than he ever normally did. To her, it had look corpse-like. It wasn't reassuring to her at the time, and remembering it then, it seemed downright ghoulish to her. She suppressed a shudder.

"Yes, I know."

Molly knew what he was going to say as he sighed deeply and changed the hand that was under his chin to begin stroking his forehead with his index finger. "You requested this kind of case. Don't be surprised by anything he does, whether it's singing show tunes when he's escorted out of the courtroom, or deciding that he likes to chew shoe laces instead of gum."

"I know, I know," Molly said. Her earlier annoyance at how Nick had been ignoring her for the past week resurfaced. Its head was not a pretty one. "but can you do me the favor of at least listening to me about something?"

"What?"

Good, she got him off-guard. "I've been around a ghost in my apartment. For some time." Alright, that wasn't as hard as she thought it'd be to say it.

Nick seemed frozen for a moment. When he finally seemed to come to, he looked up at her, blinking rapidly. "You think your apartment's haunted?"

"No, _I'm_haunted." she swallowed. It felt like something thick and unmentionably slimy was lodged in her throat. "Well, at least, ti felt that way... a week ago..." Even to her it sounded ridiculous. She knew that among the many things that were completely rational and proven in one form or another, life after death was one of the few things he believed- in his private life. But Nick was still Nick- she knew that the man had a short fuse in dealing with bullshit.

"_You're_ haunted?" He didn't need to say anything about what she had just said being irrational and something a potentially crazy person would say. It was all in his face and in the way he said it.

"Last autumn, do you remember when I went back ho- to my hometown?"

When he spoke, it was with sarcasm in his voice. "How could I forget?"

She chose, as always, to ignore his less than perfect personality. "I think I may have brought somebody with me."

He paused. "Molly... what's that supposed to mean?"

_It is what it is, old man._ "I think I may have done something when I was down in Wisconsin to bring something back with me that wasn't something I may have wanted to bring back."


	14. Doggy Gripes

**Chapter 14- Doggy Gripes**

* * *

_Who do you bring to the stand when you want to prove something as a fact?_

That was his way with explaining things to her- whether they had to do with her future as a lawyer or not. Sometimes, it felt as though he was always patronizing her, never taking her seriously. She had heard the way he addressed more than a few of the other people who came to him for help. Never once had she gotten the impression that he ever talked the way he did to her to anybody else.

She was hoping that he would offer some warmth and reassurance, but again, it was all about her learning from him and practically nothing else, let alone any crises going on in her life.

When she left, she had been left with a job of sorts. She had been given the address of some man who lived in a part of the city she had never gone through before, and was told that she would get an appointment with who Nick referred to as the only person he would pay his time to in listening and learning things about with the afterlife.

Hearing that Nick had actually had his own source for something like psychics and ghosts had been a strange experience for Molly. She had known that the man was more open-minded than anyone- even those who were close to him- would have ever believed, based on his no-nonsense presence that he had. But knowing a person that was what he referred to as his source for the afterlife was going a little further than the usual open-minded person.

It was two days following what had, to Molly, amounted to a lecture that she was riding in a taxi, sitting in the back seat next to her large dog after begging the driver and promising fifteen dollars more than she would have had to pay for the ride. She was not on good terms with the dog at the time, actually. She had not planned on taking the dog for what was summing up to be one expensive car ride. The dog had been acting strange- heck, he had actually barked _at_ her for the first time since the day she had encountered him back in the junkyard. And he did not stop barking, all the way from when she came out of her shower earlier that afternoon and up to the time she had her hand wrapped around the door knob. It was not his incessant barking that had worried Molly, although it was, admittedly, a concern for her to have to deal with a few people bugging her down the line for her dog's barking.

What had brought Molly to the decision that she could not leave Behemoth in her apartment was when he suddenly stood on his hind legs as she was about to open the front door and he pinned her to the door.

It was the single most frightening moment that Molly had experienced with the large and normally docile dog since she had brought him with her back home. The dog was so large that his upper legs rested against her shoulders- and she was muzzle-to-face with the unbelievably large rottweiler.

It did not matter to Molly then that she had spent two relatively issue-less seasons with the animal. Her fear that she had experienced upon meeting the dog in the junkyard came back in full force with the pressure of the dog pinning her against the door. Molly's heart beat a rapid, mad beat in her chest, and for a moment, she feared that she would have a heart attack at the shock of it.

She didn't know what to expect after the initial shock of the dog pinning her- but she couldn't help but assume that the dog would do something. Maybe gnaw her face off, or something equally as unexpected . The thought that he would do what most big dogs would do when jumping up on their owners- licking their owner's face- was one of the last things on her mind at the time.

The dog, however, seemed content to stare at her, almost as a person would. To say it unnerved her would've been like explaining what a Christmas tree looks like to somebody who's never seen one as a twig with a single light bulb attached to its top.

The dog's brown eyes seemed almost endless in their depth, and always seemed to be, impossible, she knew, but full of a complete understanding of what was going on inside of her mind. She tried to push the dog off of her, but she was quickly halted by the sound of a soft growl coming from the powerful animal's throat.

Molly had no idea as to what to do- and was often the case with her, no matter how great her fear was, her annoyance, or anger with her inability to take care of the situation she was in, took hold and gave her the strength to overpower her fear. Gritting her teeth, the memory of their first encounter in her head, Molly stared the dog down.

"You have to get off of me. Now, Beh."

The dog didn't move. Which was alright- she had not expected the dog to understand her in the least. She tried reaching for the door knob behind her again, tried trying to get the dog off-balance so she could try to break for the door, then tried, again, to reason with the animal. None of it worked in the least.

Fed up, she angrily asked the dog what it was it wanted. In her mind, she was trying to think of exactly how late she was going to be for her mentor's psychic friend's appointment. It was silly, to be sure, but the thought of not showing up to something for her on time made Molly bristle up in rage.

It was after she asked the dog what it wanted that she was aware that it was no longer looking up at her. His head was pointed downwards. At first, Molly looked down at the floor, trying to see what it was that the dog was looking at. There was nothing on the floor.

Tired of it, Molly opened her mouth to tell the dog to get off of her for perhaps the millionth time, or, perhaps, curse at him. As she did, however, her mind finally registered the sight of the deep green of his leash trailing out from his great neck to hang down, almost like a long tail. He was wearing his leash.

It was a bit of a battle for Molly to remain calm in the taxi. She had paid more than she should have for a single taxi ride, and all because of yet another quirk that her dog seemed to have developed- and when she had checked the time on her cell phone, she realized that she was fifteen minutes late from when she had planned on getting a taxi. She was so angry that she could barely stand to look over at the dog- who was sitting on the other side of the seats, looking, for all of the world, like any other normal passenger with the way he was staring out of the window. He was sitting on his ass, his lower body facing the driver's seat, while he looked out the window with a look of almost bored indifference. Molly wanted, for the twentieth or thirtieth time that afternoon, to land a hit on the beast, if only because of its gall to behave bored after what she had had to go through.

They arrived at the address that Molly had told the driver almost exactly a half an hour later. To her surprise, she actually lived closer to the mysterious psychic's home- and the particular cul-de-sac he lived in- than she had known or realized.

She had expected something straight from the spiritualist camps of the early nineteen hundreds- odd looking homes, trees everywhere, a séance or two on the grass and under the shade of a porch or a tall willow tree. She was let down when she saw the houses and the (she could barely believe it) white picket fences. In fact, the only thing that was worthy of any attention as anything that was differing from the norm of the white houses with their black shingles, their meticulously kept, perfectly manicured lawns, and near matching cars was the troupe of small boys walking down one of the sidewalks, the last trailing a new-looking Radio Flyer behind him.

Just the sight of the white houses was enough to make Molly feel uncomfortable in the place, as though she had fallen smack dab into the nineteen fifties vision of the American dream- complete with laughing children, the same house exterior over and over again, and perfectly maintained picket fences. Just to be sure that she was still in the two-thousands, she reached her hand into her purse and flipped open her cell phone. The house the taxi parked itself in front of was no different whatsoever from the ones around it, unless one counted the fact that its shutters were a slightly lighter shade of slate gray than the ones the houses around it had.

Molly had left the car alone- or, at least, tried to, before the combined noise of Behemoth snarling like some animal in a zoo display and the taxi driver yelling at her to come get her dog before he tasered it. That lead to Molly having to walk up to the beautiful one-story that was 2002 West Cordell with what was most likely the most sinister-looking rottweiler that the neighborhood had ever seen walking next to her.

Molly walked up to the door, adjusted the strap of the leash on her left wrist, the purse's own on her shoulder, and, trying to stop herself from scowling, jabbed the doorbell with her middle finger.

A moment of silence- was anybody home? Had he gotten fed up with waiting, and, as was more her own mentor's speed, did he go off somewhere just to spite her?- then she heard someone yelling from the back of the house. Molly could scarcely make out the words that were yelled out, but the voice was coming closer to the front door. As it did, she could finally make out that it was a male's voice yelling out, "I'm coming- stay on the stoop! I'm coming!"

The door finally opened to the face of somebody who Molly felt as though she had, astonishingly, seen before. She had to blink rapidly a few times before she could believe that she could, yes, recognize him from somewhere. But there was something off...

The man gave her what could best be described as an overly polite smile, one that seemed to stretch back all the way from the hollows of both of his cheeks. Then his gaze turned down to the rottweiler. His grin disappeared.

"Are- are you, uh," he said, still staring at Behemoth as though he could not believe what he was seeing on his doorstep. "Molly Christmas?"

"Molly Christoe, yes." she shifted uncomfortably in her tennis shoes. "I'm sorry about my dog. He's, uh..." it was then that Molly realized how stupid it would sound to anybody else that her dog had refused to allow her to leave without him. She thought, as quickly as she could, something that could possibly sound reasonable. "...he's been sick. I couldn't hire a dog sitter, so, uh..."

_Oh, lord, could I possibly sound more like an unprofessional troglodyte?_

The man never rose his gaze to Molly's face. He kept looking down at the dog, his face transforming into a look of distaste. He was silent for a moment before he, with his somehow recognizable face, finally turned to look at Molly's. Still looking as though he was not a fan of the situation, he licked his lips and said, "I hate dogs."

Molly's heart felt as though it had taken a free fall into her stomach. What would this man tell Nick once he got the chance? "I'm sorry. I had no other choice. Can you please find it in your heart to understand?"

The man's face remained unchanged as he stared at her. Then, as though trying to convey a point he had previously been unable to with the same words, he slowly repeated himself. Molly looked down at Behemoth, anger a living thing in her as the dog turned his deep eyes up at her.

Finally, the end of her awkward misery came when the man spoke again. "Can you tie the thi- the dog, up?"

Molly looked around her, then sighed, feeling like whacking her head against the cement of the sidewalk. "To what? He's so big, I'm sure he'd rip anything out when he wants to go somewhere." She was well aware that she had said when and not if.

The man swallowed, his Adam's apple bouncing in his pale throat. "Well, we can't stay out here. What we're talking about... just trust me when I say that if the neighbors find out what I'm into, then my wife'll never hear the end of it. I'd rather you just bring the dog in- he won't wet the floor or make a, uh, mess?- You sure about that?... Well, alright, I hope he's gone out today. Come on in." --


	15. A Psychic Pain

**Chapter 15- A Psychic Pain In The Ass**

The man's living room was a surprising difference to Molly.

As she had rode through the small cul-de-sac, all of her expectations about where a psychic could possibly choose to live had been destroyed, and it was replaced by its own new set of expectations. As she entered the man's living room, she found that she had once again been lulled into believing that things were not as they had seemed.

It was the Buddha on the opposite wall that immediately caught her eye upon walking into the room. Huge and gold, the statue at first creeped her out because of how she was not at all used to seeing Buddhas everywhere- let alone inside of a house that looked so much like every other upper middle class suburban home.

The rest of the room's décor was not to let Molly down, either. On the left wall were two great, near-perfectly square windows, both of which were completely covered by long white sheets instead of blinds. If he had, as Molly had heard him say earlier, really wanted to conceal the type of things that Molly now knew that he was into, then it was most likely for good reason that the windows were well covered up. On the opposite side of the windows were two tall bookcases that housed, at most, a few shelves which were reserved for books. The rest were laden with things like small, strange objects- like a small velvet drawstring bag, with, what looked like, a few sprigs of some sort of plant laying on top of it- small statues, and two pictures of what Molly could guess to be his family in large picture frames. The floor was wood, and in the middle of a room it was covered by a large blue and white rug. It looked rather expensive. Other than the two bookcases and the table where the Buddha was staring serenely from, the room had a near empty feel to it, with the exception of the small table that sat atop the regal-looking rug in the center of the room and the three chairs seated around the table. On the middle of the table, there was a small slat of some sort that looked as though it was made of some kind of stone, or, perhaps, marble. Sticking out of one edge of the piece was what looked, at first, like a light-colored twig. As she got a closer look at it, however, she recognized it as the last part of a burnt stick of incense. It would have accounted for the way the room smelled- it was a pungent, woodsy smell. It made her feel like gagging just to smell it as she was brought into the room.

The man sat at the table after pulling a chair out across from where he sat. He indicated that he wanted Molly to sit in the chair he had pulled out, but Molly remained in the doorway of the room.

As they had walked to the doorway, Molly had finally gotten a good look at the man's face, and as she was ready to finally walk into the strange room, she finally realized where it was that she believed that she had seen the man before. And the truth was, she had not seen him, personally, but he looked so much like Darrin from the old TV show "Bewitched" that for a moment, she could have believed that that was who he really was, or, at least, someone who was related to the character's actor.

The psychic turned to look over at her, a look of annoyance on his face. "Are you going to sit down in there, or am I going to have to read you in that doorway?"

Molly sat down in one of the seats opposite to the psychic. As she did, she noticed that the psychic's gaze was on the seat next to her. Looking to her right, she was surprised to realize that Behemoth had taken the seat next to her and had rested his paws on the table.

"Do you... train him to do this?" The psychic asked, obviously not amused.

"Uh, no. He's just always been like this."

The psychic looked as though he was sucking on one of his cheeks as he continued to stare at the dog, which stared right back at him. "It's a bit unnerving."

Molly shifted in the chair uncomfortably. "I'm sorry." there was a long, totally uncomfortable silence. Molly cleared her throat, finally getting the psychic's attention back on her. "I don't think we've really been introduced. At least, I don't know your name."

The psychic gave her a small, odd sort of smile. "I don't tell my clients my real name. The last time I did that was one of the biggest mistakes that I've ever made selling my gift out to people. Just think of me as Jackie Jump." As he said his name, Molly finally got the first light of real humor in his eyes. It made Molly feel as though she had finally got the first look of something human in the psychic.

Feeling adventurous, Molly gave him a cracked half-smile, and said, "I think you look more like something that begins with a D."

He gave her a smile that said that he was just humoring her. "Really? And what name that begins with a D would you think would fit me?"

Her half-smile matured into a full grin. "Maybe a name like Darrin instead of Jackie?"

Jackie grimaced. "Oh god, don't tell me you think I look like that husband off of "Bewtiched". I promised myself that the next time I heard that I looked like him, I would hang myself."

"So, I take it that you'd prefer to still be called Jackie?"

Jackie held his hand out in a mocking gesture of politeness. "If that is alright with you. Now, I think we've gone off-course somewhere along our train of thought. Allow me to put us back on track- my good friend Nick Talhoun has been hinting for the past week that someone- I believe he was hinting about you- has been having some problems. Apparently, he's been beside himself with worry about this person, and he thought that it had something to do with something _stupid_-" he didn't have to look up at Molly to make her feel the embarrassment heating her face in a deep blush. "-that this person did when she went to go dig up things she shouldn't have. And that it had something to do with someone more than a little famous in Wisconsin. Or should I say "infamous"?

'The problem is, as much as I've wanted to help my good friend, I've been busy playing family man since he first contacted me."

Since the beginning of the_ week_?

Molly had been used to the assumption that Nick had been indifferent to what it was that had been bothering her. But if Jackie was telling the truth, then that would mean that she was totally wrong about Nick. At least, in the belief that he hadn't cared about her when she really did need him.

"Now, I believe that Nick has probably laid down the ground rules when it comes to using me. I believe he should have not neglected to mention that I'm not much at all of a dog person, but I digress... Anyway, I think it'd be better, for the both of us, that I lay out what Nick's no doubt already mentioned. Do you have a problem with me stating the rules before we get started?" Molly opened her mouth to answer him, but was cut off by Jackie. "Okay, good. First of all, here's my disclaimer. I do what I can do, and I know I'm one of the best in the city. Maybe, probably in the state, but the point is this: I practice and I do what I can, but I make no promises that whatever it is I- we- dig up is true. But between the two of us- it probably is." He gave Molly a half smile that would normally make her want to slap the person smiling.

"Next, if you want to recommend somebody else to have a sitting with me, you will have to get together with me beforehand or we'll have to have a long, lengthy phone conversation before you tell this person about where I live or anything about what I do."

"Will I be neutralized if I tell anybody about your existence?"

"If I'm going to help you, let you in my home, and bring that dog in here, then I'm going to need you to take everything I ask you to do seriously. Can you do that?"

Molly felt like a small child who had just been pulled out of a room by her ear for bad behavior. "I understand. Sorry."

"Next, what I usually charge for this is somewhere in the ballpark of five-hundred to a thousand and five-hundred."

"Jesus!" Molly's mind swam. How could she possibly be able to scrape together enough? She guessed that if she was going to have to pay for this, it would have been somewhere, at most, around a hundred-fifty. She had no idea of how the rates for anything dealing with a psychic services worked, true. But a thousand and five-hundred? She was beginning to feel that she would have rather gone to one of the psychics that owned shops downtown, she would have gotten an interesting show- maybe a palm-reader or a good crystal ball looking, but most important of all, she would have certainly been treated better and with more hospitality.

"Oh, don't give me that look," Jackie said in a cruel, sarcastic voice. "this is for Nick. It's on the house, as long as you're under his wing. My last rule is that you do not let any of these nosy housemothers in this neighborhood get so much as an inkling that I have anything close to this room in my house. Or that I do what I do."

Molly slowly nodded in understanding. She wasn't going to argue with Jackie, especially after hearing that none of this would cost her anything. She decided that when she next got the chance to she would kiss and hug her mentor for this.

Almost forgotten by both people, Behemoth made his presence known by made a low, chuffing sound, almost like a cross between a cough and a low, almost indiscernible bark.

Jackie turned away from Molly, looking at the dog. His gaze was a thoughtful one. "Does he make that noise often?"

"Uh... I think he's made that noise before. Once or twice."

Jackie blinked, shaking his head. "Maybe I'm just not used to dogs at all or something... Anyway," his voice, a thoughtful near-murmur, turned into his usual tone of voice as he turned to look back up at Molly. "are you at all familiar with the type of reading I'm planning on trying with you?"

Molly stared at him, confused. "R- reading?"

The man had the audacity to roll his eyes. It felt as though she was being chastised by a teacher for not doing her homework. "It's what a well-practiced psychic can do- and what a bad one _shouldn't_do. I don't know who the idiot was who originally called it "reading"- but if reading a person was like pulling out a good novel and just following a simple storyline, then I would have been a real master of it after my third year of being in practice. I might as well have a Ph. D in this field, as long as I've been doing this." he gave out a bitter laugh. "Maybe I'd get paid better, then."

"You told me earlier that you drag in one thousand and five-hundred dollars when you do a reading." Molly said. She almost immediatally regretted blurting it out as soon as she said it. She had meant it in a more polite way, trying seem more like she was interested in what he was explaining to her. Jackie seemed to take it as badly as she worried that he would.

His eyes tightened into near-slits and his lips seemed to draw together. "I'm lucky if I get two readings a month. I have to charge how much I need to have in order for me and my family to subsist. On top of that, I have invested more time and energy into what it is I do- and I think that I deserve to be compensated for the time that I spend in this room, practicing, studying... spending time away from my kids."

"Alright, alright," Molly held her hands out in front of her defensively. "I get it, I get it."

Jackie shut his eyes and began to slowly massage the sides of his forehead with his index and middle fingers. After a moment, he took in a deep breath, let it out, and said, "Back on track, once again, I think I should explain a bit more on what a reading entails, so you understand exactly what is going to happen while I'm doing this- and how we're gonna do this." with an somehow regretful sigh, Jackie drew his fingers off of his forehead and reached across the desk with both of his hands. Layla was surprised when he took her hands up in a gentle grip. As he did, both heard the dog issue a soft growl in his seat. If Jackie noticed or cared, he was too busy staring at Molly to understand or care. "Were going to have to hold hands- like this. Don't worry, though, I make it a point to close my eyes while I do this. The last time I was staring at a female client, my wife came home early. Not fun times. Moving to my next point, you should not expect to feel anything, well weird- I had to start explaining that when one of my clients decided that I was a fraud unless he started levitating or some other nonsense like that. You are alright if you don't levitate, correct?"

"I'd actually rather that I not levitate, if that's alright."

Jackie nodded. "Next, I may- well, I probably will- see things about you that you wouldn't just tell me on meeting me. It's alright, I won't mention it unless it's pertinent to what we're trying to do here. Also, I've already mentioned that I don't want you to mess with my life in any way, I won't do the same to you. Is that alright by you?"

Molly was getting sick of nodding, having to answer stupid questions. She did it nevertheless. In her mind, she was replaying what he said about him being able to see things about her she would no necessarily want him to see in the first place. She thought, uncomfortably, about that week she spent living with a man who was one of her old client's brothers. That was something she never wanted anyone to learn about, let alone see first hand as it happened to her. Feeling uncomfortable and a little embarrassed, Molly said, "So, are you in my mind now?"

Jackie had that look in his face that said that he wished that she would either wisen up to the situation or, at least, stop asking stupid questions. "No, that's just... that's just bad psychic etiquette. Only scum invades other people's mind without their consent. Besides, why would I want to push myself more than I need to just to jump into your mind straight away? It gives me a headache-" he winced, as though remembering a past incident. "-whenever I do it for too long. There's something we can get straight, right away. Another thing is this- I can only do thirty minute sessions, and iIm sorry, you can tell my good friend and lawyer I said this, in verbatim, but if you need a session that'll go over thirty minutes long, then you or him will have to pay me what I normally charge. Another thing that I should say now..." it was the first time that he looked uncomfortable. Almost frightened. He leaned in closer to her over the table as though he was about to impart some amazing secret that was not for the other occupant of the room- the dog- to hear. "If it is not something, uh, of the other world that is or was, at some point, human or a past memory of some kind that we are trying to uncover, then it does not matter how much you can offer me. You'll have to leave immediately and contact the proper people to do whatever it is you need to do about it. But it's not going to be me."

An immediate chill went up Molly's spine. "What... what's that supposed to mean?"

"For the most part, what I'm referring to are demons."

"Jackie..." Molly began, trying to calm herself. "you don't seriously mean that people have come in here with... with demons as their problem."

He smiled at her in an almost eerie way. "I wish I could be joking. Don't worry, though- unless you do something dumb, like become a practicing satanist, manage to find a portal to the other world- there's a one out of a ten-thousand chance of that happening, by the way- or make something on the other side extremely ticked off, you should not be seeing faces in your mirrors or get the urge to kill anybody you may be dating or start drawing upside-down crosses on the wall." he smiled at her and gave her hands a reassuring squeeze. "And, on one last note, I should warn you, as a side note to what I earlier said about being able to see parts of things you may not wish I could see, that "reading" in the manner that I've learned and have trained in doing is akin to going through your mind, like going through a house. Now, while I'm in you, it's more like going through the Winchester Mystery House- but times about ten or twenty."

Molly stared back at him, confused. "Winchester? Like, the gun company?"

Another one of Jackie Jump's ever-suffering looks. "Just think if it as a super crazy funhouse slash maze house. False doors, doors built to look like walls, corridors leading nowhere."

"Ah, uh, okay."

"Moving on, as I was saying, if there's something like a spirit that's clinging to you, then I'll be sure to find it while I'm going through your hou- mind. It may take awhile, but trust me, out of all of the rooms, false doors, weird places, and things in your mind, something like a ghoulie hanging onto you for dear afterlife is as easy to spot, once you get into a near enough spot where it's hiding. It will most likely be easier to spot than that dog of yours getting into the Kennel Club."

"Are you implying that my dog would not belong in a dog show?"

"Stay on subject. I should mention, for the last thing, that I could do this faster, but if I would, I would get bombarded with images, as though I was flying through your head, your memories, et cetera. It's the psychic equivalent of flipping through channels. One thing that's the problem with that method, however, is you also get a bridge to my mind. Someone who is as practiced as I am could very well know how to cross that bridge. In order to protect me and my family, I never allow such a method to be used. I'd risk a headache rather than my family's well-being." Molly was just grateful that he hadn't wanted to get her to agree with him once again. That quirk of him was beginning to get on her nerves in the worst way. "Alright. I think you know everything that you should." Jackie said. _Much more than I probably would have needed to know, _Molly thought sarcastically. "I think we can get started, before you get scared off."

It was dumb, to Molly, for him to assume that she was more scared about something like a psychic reading than how afraid she had been all week as it was. If he had known how worn-out she was feeling as he held hands with her and spoke to her about the intricacies of psychic reading, he would have had a good appreciation for why her humor that afternoon was already past dark. If he could read her as well as he had been assuring her that he could, though, he would likely be able to realize that for himself.

Knowing she would likely get another annoyed look from the psychic, Molly still gave the neurotic man her winning smile and said, "I'm ready when you're ready, Derrin."

He didn't hang himself.--

It had been about fifteen minutes since Jackie had shut his eyes and informed her that he was entering the bridge way into her mind.

Molly knew that he had said that she wouldn't be aware that he was crawling around in her head in any strange way, and Molly had been truthfully glad that levitation would not be part of the experience. But it would have been fun, and more than just a bit validating that the man really was in her mind, if she would have at least felt a weird sensation crawling along her skin like marching ants. Or if she heard Jackie Jump's own voice in her head, telling her that that college test she failed at years upon years ago that she still regretted from time to time was something pitiful to linger on.

Nothing.

Because she could not detach her hands from Jackie's own, she had no choice other than to amuse herself by looking around the room, at the stone incense burner that was just five or six inches away from her right side, and at Behemoth. She couldn't speak- another rule he pointed out moments before he "was under", as he called it. Which worked alright for her- who else was there to talk to besides herself and Jackie himself?

For the past five minutes, she had amused herself by trying to read what the titles of the books he had on one of his shelves were. It was hard- most of them were written in small print, so she had to squint, looking past Jackie's head.

It came as a surprise when Jackie suddenly opened his eyes and took in a great gasping breath of air. Molly nearly jumped out of her chair.

"What is it?!" Molly yelped.

Jackie said nothing at first, only continuing to gasp like a fish.


End file.
